Harry, I have fifty years of shooting 2 3/4" Super-X factory loads and identical reloads out of my 2 1/2" chambered VH 28 gauge. I'll try to remember to bring this little jewel to the Southern next spring for everyone to examine. By the way, Harry, will you be at the Fall Southern next weekend? Kevin and I are coming down on Friday. 477 miles from my house. We really owe it to Rick Hemingway for being such a friend to us at the Spring Southern. He is such a nice guy.

I just finished up 19days of hunting ruffies with Trigg in Saskatchewan and Alberta and ruffies and woodcock in Minnesota at the RGS annual shoot, all with my 26" 28ga SK1/SK2 Repro and felt I had the perfect gun. Strangely enough(to me anyway), some folks were using 12ga guns with 1-1/4oz heavy hunting loads. That seemed overkill to me, and I'm not even a very good shot. I used mostly 7-1/2 shot and even when hit with 2-3 pellets birds went down well. I had not gotten or even seen a woodcock in 43yrs and got 3 during the RGS hunt. Very fun. We did our last hunting for sharptails in Alberta this morning but saw only one ruffed grouse and we're on our way home tonite, which will take two more long days of driving. We've got the geese we got with Bob Brown frozen and in the car top carrier. Bob called us today while we were walking the edge of a pea field. Hopefully we'll get to hunt with him and Brett again next year. Brett offered us a whole deer he had hanging in his barn... next to his elk.... today, but we didn't have room in the car! Too bad!

Bill,

I would have loved to come and be with you fellows again. Just a different set of circumstances these days. I was thinking of selling my 28, but after having it beside Uncle Bill's 20 gauge with the same 0 frame size and 26" barrels it would be one of the last to go....

Harry

Harry,Those are two great photos. Thanks for posting them. :)

Harry, don't sell the 28. About 49 years ago, a year after I bought my 28, a Parker guy here locally, my first Parker mentor, offered me $200 for it. I came real close to selling it. What 14 year old could resist doubling his money on a new purchase? Somehow, I resisted the temptation and enjoyed fifty years of pleasure with my first Parker.

WOW......a whole 200.00.........geez how couldya pass that up???????:nono:

Not too long after I bought my little 28, a fellow named Al Oden attended an ATA shoot at our gun club. He showed me two 28 gauge VH Parkers that he had for sale, both $200 as I recall. One was a 24" gun with beavetail forend and blued frame. Even at 15 years old I knew a trashed out non original gun when I saw it. It was a nice shooter, but not for $200. The other gun was a high condition original gun, 28" barrels, loaded up with color. This was a great gun, even at that price, but I had one just like it, didn't need two, so I passed on that one too. Al said he had lots of guns at his place of business and my Dad and I should come over some time. Al had a rough bar in Glen Burnie, not far from Baltimore. Dad and I went over one Saturday when Al was apparently at a trap shoot. We didn't get to see Al, but we played the slots, Dad had a beer or two, and we looked at the guns that lined the walls of the bar. From the time I was a pup, Dad and I liked to play the slots and play pool in the seedy bars in Southern Maryland when on fishing and hunting trips. That was the first and only time we went to Al's place and I never did get to see the rest of his shotguns.

Ahh. . . those missed opportunities - we should collaborate on a book, we'll name it "Twenty/Twenty Hindsight" waddaya say Bill?

Yup, I've got a book full, as do the rest of us.

Most of you remember wages from 45 to 50 years ago. I earned $0.50 an hour unless we were bailing hay and I got a $1.00 an hour. When we were housing tobacco I earned $2.00 an hour or if I were cutting tobacco I earned $2.00 a hundred sticks (six stalks to the stick). I worked most of the summer to buy my first car, a 1947 Studebaker, for $60.00 and spent another $40.00 to put new tires all the way around and it cost another $125.00 to insure. A friend of my fathers slipped up on a BHE two barreled set for $100.00. Oh well.....