Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under

[Bill Murphy]

I don't own every brand of fine shotgun, but I'm getting there. I have owned my first Parker for sixty years, since I was fourteen years old, and finally reached the holy grail recently. My "holy grail" was a Whitworth Fluid Steel barrel AA Grade Parker Pigeon Gun and a Whitworth barrel exposed hammer, bar in iron, late Purdey pigeon gun, one of the last ever made before the recent reintroduction at $80,000 plus. My first shotgun, when I was about eleven years old, was an 1887 Lefever E Grade pigeon gun owned by my grandfather, a pigeon shooter and pigeon ring proprietor in Hazleton, PA. I guess I was inoculated early with the "shoot birds for money" needle. He died in 1929 and his Lefever remained in storage with my uncle Norbert until he sent it to me around 1956. Apparently, eleven was his idea of the proper age for a kid to have his first Lefever. I wasted no time loading my first box of black powder shells for it.