Rise & Fall of American SxS's

Dean Romig · 01-17-2018, 10:53 AM

I guess it's all what you believe in for a gun. If you believe a Perazzi will break clays better and more consistently than an old SXS then for heaven's sake, shoot your Perazzi...

At my skeet club our champion registered skeet shooter Zeno Marcos and I were shooting a round of informal skeet, he with his custom Perazzi with 20 ga. tubes in it and I was shooting a 16 ga. Grade 1 hammer gun and he was teasing me about me not being able to afford a Perazzi. I let it roll off... I had only dropped two birds and he was upset at himself for dropping one. I was shooting low gun - he of course, wasn't. We got to station 8 and he asked if I wanted to try his gun. I had never shot a Perazzi before and I said "Sure." He said in his thick Greek accent "But you can no shoot a Perazzi from down there you gotta mount da gun first."
He passed me the gun and a shell and I smashed the high house bird starting from low gun position. He was surprised. I turned around and faced the low house. Zeno said "You GOTTA mount da gun first! You will never hit this one from down low!" I asked him for two shells and told the trapper to give me two from the low house. Again I swung the gun up from a very low position - at about my waist - and diesel-smoked both of them. Zeno took his gun and just walked away shaking his head.

Trust me, it wasn't the gun....

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C.O.B. · 01-17-2018, 11:13 AM

IMHO there are no experts left in places like the Gun Library. The "collector guns" are a finite resource just as the people who are knowledgeable in these guns are. The employees look at a computer screen and see what was paid for a similar Parker, Fox, Winchester etc and base there values on that. I'm currently trying to deal with the Reno store on a rifle but they won't answer my questions. Remember this as well Cabellas has a minimum mark up of 30% on the rifle I'm considering there trying to make 50%+.

Perhaps we as SXS aficionados are a dying breed and maybe we won't recover the value we put into a gun at least monetarily speaking. The enjoyment I get from carrying a light well balance small bore following a pointing dog in the grouse coverts or pheasant fields transcends any amount of money.