What was and what could have been...

[Mike of the Mountain]

A client of ours brought in two doubles today for me to look over for him. A LCS Specialty Grade in 16g and a Parker DH 12g. This Parker was a 1900 date of manufacture. It had quite a bit of CC left on the action, tang, trigger guard, etc. Double trigger, capped pistol grip, beautiful checkered butt with skeleton butt-plate. Checkering was clean and crisp. Stock, fore-end and checkering looked original and not refinished. It has beautiful 28" Damascus bbls and ivory bead. Onlt problem is that it was originally a 30" gun! Also looked like the bored had been polished. I checked the chambers and they were 2 5/8". I checked the chokes and both were .003". My guess is after cutting the bbls they polished the bores and opened the chokes. I never say never but I don't see taking 2" off the bbls would remove all the choke unless it had very little choke to begin with. The ivory bead was also maybe 1/4" from the muzzle with rib matting right to the muzzle. The rib matting is what set off my spider-sense. It's still a beautiful gun with plenty of wall thickness left and a #2 frame. Everything was sexy about that gun except for the bbls. He will enjoy shooting it and it is really nice. But, it could have been REALLY NICE!!!