Can someone check this serial #?
 

Can someone check serial number 236839 on a 28 gauge Parker?:bigbye: thanks!

VHE-28 ga.-26" barrells

V grade, 26" barrels, ejectors, mfg 1934

And sold ...
 

... and sold at Abercrombie & Fitch on November 27, 1935 to Senator ...

Bob Beach
Records Archivist
Griffin & Howe, Inc

http://www.griffinhowe.com/research-main.cfm

Thanks Bob! Do you know what Senator? My Grandfather was a foreman on a plantation in south Georgia and all I knew was that a guest of the plantation missed three ducks in a row and threw the gun to my grandfather and said you can have this gun...I can't hit anything with it!

There you go Albert. Contact Robert at Griffin & Howe for a really top-notch research letter and to discover which senator ordered that gun. Bob gave you his contact information at the bottom of his reply.

This is some of the most fun of collecting these guns... the investigation and research we

can do and have done for a very reasonable price on the provenance of our guns.

Got it Bob, I am going to your page to make a request! Thanks for the link.

I hang around with a lot of bad shooters yet no one has ever thrown me a gun!:duck:

What a great story! If I threw a gun away every time I missed 3 ducks in a row, I would have had an empty gun rack a long long long looooooooong time ago.....

Present company (myself) excluded of course :whistle:

Right Larry?....... Larry?.................................. Larry?

Why do these things never happen to me.....

I used to be a goose guide but I never had anybody give me their gun after they missed three in a row.

If those Chicago boys that used to come down and hunt with us did that sort of thing I'd have a pickup truck load.


DLH

Dean,
I'm guessing your not the only one who is wondering the same thing.:)

The guy was shooting waterfowl with a 28 gauge with 26" barrels? No wonder he couldn't hit anything, much less bring it down.

By the early 1930s the progressive burning powder 28-gauge shells, such as Western Cartridge Co.'s Super-X, were on the market, packing a full 3/4 ounce of shot. Plenty for ducks over decoys at 35 yards or less. Many shooters out in the great California Central Valley duck clubs were using long barrel Parker Bros. 20- and 28-gauges in the days when the 28-gauge shells packed 1 3/4 drams of bulk smokeless powder and 5/8 ounce of shot, from the early days of the 28-gauges.

From the mid-seventies to early eighties Federal offered a 7/8oz load in the 28ga. with 7 1/2's. When the Bozos in DC dictated steel shot in the 12ga. I switched over to 20 and 28ga for waterfowl. Believe me when I tell you that a 28ga. is plenty lethal when you pick your shots especially over dekes.

Not to hijack but this is a 28 ga. and those are ducks. :) Photos are 1 year apart and one is a crummy copy of a copy.

I've seen ducks killed with a .410, you've just got to pick your shoots and get them real close when you use a smallbore. I don't like picking my shots, I like to take them as they come, so I used something a bit larger. Different strokes for different folks, that's what makes all this conversation so fun.


Destry

Yeah, its about a once a year thing for me and always over decoys, of course, and the M/F barrels. Normally I use something larger. I like the 16 ga. but usually its a 12. We finally have some geese coming in to our ponds and only 3 days left of the season. I plan to try for some tonight and NOT with a 28 ga! Will post a pic if successful. Will use the 12 ga. VH w/ full and fuller chokes.

Thanks for the education on small bores for waterfowl. (My problem is I don't know what I don't know.) That looks like a long barreled 28, Peter. What are its dimensions? I did see a 16 gauge DHE last week on a #1 frame with 32" barrels. I was told there is a Parker letter tracing it to a group of 3 ordered by members of California duck club.

Don't worry Dean, You'll never be as bad as me. I shot my gun in the air one time and missed.

A lot of the smallbore 32 inch guns can be traced to the West Coast duck clubs. DuBray was a big proponent of the smallbore shotgun for waterfowl as was Edwin Hedderly who wrote about them in Western Field magazine. I've read a great story about a guy being invited to a small bore only duck club in California but for the life of me I can't find it again. I'd swear it was in one of the William Hazelton collections.

All the oddball 3 inch paper smallbore shells I've got in my collection have come out of California.



Destry

Its a reproduction two barrel set, sorry. The 28" barrels are on it in the pictures. There was an original 28 ga in my family. It was given to my dad by his older brother, however it was stolen back in the 30s or early 40s. That is how I got interested in these things. I will always wonder what it was. Dad said it had damascus barrels and a lot of engraving. Who knows??? My uncle was a man with a taste for nice things, especially guns. He was born in 1879 so he was buying during the heyday of American craftsmanship. He favored Parkers and WW Greeners.

My dad bought one of the Wigeon Club guns from Gary Herman, back around 1980. It (they all were) was a 32" 20 bore.