what was your first parker

[Bindlestiff]

I inherited a GHE 16ga back in 1972 when my very best friend died. My other guns might be sold but never that one. I take it hunting every fall.

[Trap3]

Thanks Jeff... Well, not as often as they should. Have a few vintage sbt guns. They get to the club a couple times a year...

[George Lang]

Mine was a 20 ga Trojan with rib extension. Paid $30 in 1968, Traded it and $20 for a 12ga VH 2 years later. Wish I had it back.

[wayne goerres]

My first parker was a G grade. Didnt know anything about them. It was a hammerless damascus barreled gun. In a bout of stupidity I traded it for a kimber eclipse.

[Marty K.]

Ok...It was 1979 after I got married and got my first lab.... Somehow my Ithaca Model 37 20 gauge just didn't seem quite right for shooting upland birds...I recall Gene Hill having something to do with that thinking,...anyway there she was a 16 VH for,.. huh? $900 ...a bit over priced but I had to have it...after having it a short time I bulged the right barrel with an unseen dose of snow while chasing pheasants.....OH NO! ...sent it up to Lee Center (Lefever Arms) to fix and thought while they had it why not refinish the stock?...well it came back with perfect barrels but a completely blonde stock...and I didn't know at the time who could fix it.....the gun never was the same for me....but I do have a great picture of "Robbie, two woodcock and my "first Parker" and haven't had one refinished since........

[Harold Pickens]

a VH 16 with 28" barrels circa 1925. Probably taken more game with that gun than any other. Bought it in 1987.

[TARNATION !!!]

32" VH 12 ga F/M CPG DHBP. This was my Dad's gun. I grew up in awe of that gun in my Dad's hands. He gave it to me in the early '80's. I shot a lot of birds with it until 2003 when the left barrel failed. It is now an 18" coach gun. I finally got a set of barrels that fit it, so it will be back in the field this fall.



I asked Dad to write a bit about each of his guns before he passed. Here is what he had to say about 145522.

The Parker double barreled was purchased from Russels Sporting Goods in Calgary about 1952. It cost $85. At that time, I made my own ammunition and the first hunt with the shot gun I got 5 snow geese with 2 shots with reload BB's. There were four of us in the hunting party and we all crawled up on the geese. Just as they took off I fired twice as they were airborn and dropped five. Another time I made a high shot at a V of mallards and pintails. I got 5 ducks with one shot. The gun would knock the birds down between seventy five and eighty yards. One time the right side of the stock blew off in my face. I was wearing shooters glasses at the time. I got a lot of splinters in my right hand and some brass. Apparently the firing pin poked a hole through the primer and caused the charge to come back through the gun. This was the best shotgun I ever owned.

[charlie cleveland]

what a great storey jack.. charlie

[Scott Fox]

My First Parker was purchased in 1988. It was a well worn DH grade that had the barrels lopped off to 18" and the butt had a slip on rubber pad because someone had removed the skeleton buttplate. This shotgun was on display at my local gunshop behind the counter not for sale, but as a humorous "security device". The owner did not want to sell the gun as he considered it a unsafe wall hanger. It had been hanging there he told me for over twenty five years. I kept pestering him until he finally sold it to me. I loved the engraving on that Parker, and that was what hooked me on Parkers ever since.

[Jack Selman]

Mine is a damascus 16 GH handed down to me in 1980 from my dad. It was his father's, a gentleman who passed away before I was born. It hangs over our fireplace mantle. I picture my pa and his pa strolling the Georgia hedgerows, kicking up a covey of bobs and sending feathers flying. That gift whetted a Parker appetite that lingers today.