[Kevin McCormack]

I always wanted an A-5 but was too dumb to buy one at my employee's 25% discount when I worked in a major sporting goods store in the late 1960s - early 1970s. I saw one at a local gun show a few years ago that was the quintessential duck (blind) gun - a 12 ga. 28" MOD VR RKLT version with the original funky FN hard buttplate complete with gun cabinet worm holes, washed out wood and receiver and barrel gone to pewter color. It had a broken rib just forward of the rib stanchion so the guy had it on the table for $180.

I bought it on the spot and took it home and tried to figure out how to completely disassemble it (booklet says remove forend & barrel and you are done). Couldn't figure it out so I called Browning UT and when I finally got to talk to a live human, the guy said, "Are you handy with tools?". I said yeah, reasonably so. He told me what I needed was the reprint of their 1923 Shop Manual which gave complete dissasembly instructions. I got it and took the gun completely apart (all 70-some pieces of it!).

I was so mesmerized with the design and function of the completely inertial spring driven action (no gas pistons or cylinders!) that I started to buy them in different variations (Sweet 16s, 3" Mags, etc.) to shoot and hunt with. How JMB got the recoil train to function with split-second timing and leverage to produce the rate of fire and reloading really put the sap on my head! I wound up having a collection of 15 of them at one time, including graded guns.

The strangest thing is that in all those years of searching and buying I never bought a 20 ga. for whatever reason. Years after I sold off all of them but my original broken rib gun, I saw a really nice 1965 A-5 20 ga. 28" MOD VR RKLT come up at auction. I bought it and added an extra FN skeet VR barrel (pricey but who cares!?). It is a great shooting little gun and fills my niche of the 'missing' smallbore A-5s.

Pics are of the broken rib 12 that started it all.......