[stumpstalker]

Here is a favorite from my small collection of rifles, and used for my semi-purposeful walks in the woods during Deer season. It is a 1906-era Model 1894 octagonal-barreled 30.30 cal. Winchester; and it was once owned by Robert Bumford, of Concord, Massachusetts, a hunting and fishing buddy of my father’s, and a friend who died of cancer in his mid-30s.

I retain the original buckhorn sights, but replaced them and added the Skinner aperture sights, without having to make any permanent alterations.

Another photo below shows "Bobby” on the left and my father on the right (an unidentified man is in the middle) after a day Blue-fishing in Nantucket Sound.

The rifle was inherited by my father, and then by me.

It is heavy, but carries easily, when straight-armed pendantly, and without a sling, due to its convenient balance-point and rounded forearm.

For years I puzzled over what had crudely been scratched, probably with a pocket knife, into the forearm: “L. Allen Scott/ Phantom Valley Ranch”. It sounded to me like a name right out of a Hollywood Western. It is he who probably carved a horse’s head on one side of the stock, and a daisy on the other.

Such carvings surely do nothing but diminish any residual collector value to what is a prosaic 1894 Winchester, to begin with. But for me, they invest the gun with a unique intrigue.

Due to the internet, I now know that it was probably owned by Lester Allen Scott, who ran a dude ranch, in Colorado, at one time, named Phantom Valley Ranch. It existed from early in the 20th to the mid-20th Century.

I attach a link below.

It is one of those firearms of a category where the monetary value is slight, but the story is meaningful.