Dad's L.C.

Due mainly to a bit of urging on my part, my father became an avid deer hunter during his later years, but his passion was always rabbit and quail hunting. And it was not always for sport. As the oldest son in a family of a dozen kids, it was among his many responsibilities to harvest small game for the table. He used to tell me how difficult it was for friends of his who lived in the city during the Depression; times were not exactly easy for the Simpson family, but living on a farm enabled them to grow grains, vegetables, pigs and cows, and that, along with rabbits, squirrels and quail harvested with his shotgun, kept starvation at bay.

After someone is no longer with us we always think of questions we wished we'd asked. One I never got around to was the first shotgun my father owned. The first one I am aware of is a 16-gauge L.C. Smith double. I do recall him saying it was the first new gun he'd ever bought and it cost him about two week's wages. Throughout his entire life Dad seldom ever bought anything on credit, and thinking back, it had to have taken him quite some time to save up enough spare cash.

Based on its serial number, Dad's L.C. Smith was built in 1949, the year before Hunter Arms Company ceased production. A field-grade gun, it left the factory with case-coloring on its receiver, but most of it was long ago worn away by hands roughened from hard work. Much of the bluing is either missing or has turned a brownish patina. Both bores still gleam like freshly polished mirrors.

L.C. Smith guns had a reputation for never shooting loose, and even after decades of steady use the action is still as tight as a tick and the position of its top lever when the gun is closed indicates minimal wear on its rotary locking bolt. Both triggers break crisp. The twenty-six-inch barrels are bored to .655 inch and feature a solid rib; they are choked .010 and .025 inch for Improved/Cylinder and Improved/Modified. Unlike some vintage guns, it doesn't have excessive drop in the stock and fits me as well as anything I've ever shot. The gun is all original with one exception--by the time I reached high school I was using it about as much as Dad and talked him into allowing me to replace its buttplate with a thin rubber pad, a goofy idea I now regret.

Dad eventually owned two other shotguns, a Lightning-grade Browning Superposed and a Remington Model 100 skeet gun, both in 20 gauge. He was an excellent wing shot with both, but I don't believe he shot them as consistently well as the L.C. Smith. When it came to hitting flying targets, Dad was a natural, and on more than one occasion I saw him pull off incredible shots on doves and quail.

Perhaps he passed just a smidgen of his skill on to me in the form of his favorite shotgun. Like the time not long ago when I was chasing Hungarian partridges and sharptail grouse in Montana. As a covey of Huns flushed from a windrow of Caragana, I dropped an outgoing bird with the right barrel and then swung on a second bird flying to my left and grassed it with the left barrel. Huns usually flush in concert, but the occasional straggler will allow those of us who hunt with doubles more than two shots. Just as I lowered my gun to reload, another bird flushed from about fifty yards, flying almost directly at me. Quickly breaking down "Elsie" (while silently wishing it had ejectors), I replaced the spent case in the right barrel with a fresh round, closed the gun, swung on the bird just as it passed by and dropped it in a shower of feathers.

Try taking the low-house target in skeet from the first station but don't load your gun until you call for the bird and you will experience the shot I made on one very unlucky Hun. Lucky or not, I have to believe Dad was smiling with approval as he looked down on that beautiful Montana day and watched me bag a species of game bird he never got to hunt with his favorite gun.