My grandfather told me a story about working for a man named Captain Fischer or, that is what I recall the man’s name being. Captain Fischer ran a tug boat. My grandfather was paid $5.00 per week. He said that this was enough to buy clothes for his children during the Great Depression. Captain Fischer owned a model 12 Winchester 12 Gauge shotgun. He gave it to my grandfather, who used this gun to hunt for food to feed his family. I don’t know where they lived during that time, but we have a picture of my father standing in front of a canvas shack, located in a mill village, near Hopewell, Virginia. Dad once took us there to show my grandson where they lived, but all that remained was a dirt road through the woods.
This gun was built in 1916 and given to grandad sometime in the mid 1930’s. The gun has been in the family ever since. My grandmother sewed a pearl button to a piece of elastic, so that it could be securely slipped over the end of the barrel. On moonlit nights, grandad would float the river and the button would reflect the moonlight, so he could see the end of the barrel, while he harvested geese and ducks to feed his family. It is hard to estimate how much food this gun has harvested. Those who knew it estimated it to be boxcar loads of deer, turkey, ducks, geese, squirrels and rabbits.
The model 12 had a design flaw, in that the stock was too thin, where the bolt went through, that attached the stock. It was not uncommon to see these guns being used with taped up stocks, like broken baseball bats. When that happened to this gun, my dad was working in the carpenter shop at the mill. He and another craftsman fabricated a new stock for the shotgun. The stock looks just like a factory stock, but it has a thicker cross section where it attaches. That stock is still on the gun today. This gun has been passed down through the generations, to dad, Uncle Dewey and we have a picture of grandad and Uncle Gooney with this gun. When grandad died, daddy got the gun and now it is in my possession. It still shoots as good as it ever did.
Once, after a hunt, Uncle Gooney took the gun to a turkey shoot. As Dad and Uncle Dewey were driving home, wild turkeys crossed the road. They could not shoot them, because Gooney had the gun. They went back to get the gun from Gooney, who had just won a turkey at the shoot, but when they returned, the wild turkeys were gone. Uncle Gooney told me that if you aimed the gun like a rifle and squeezed the trigger, it would almost always win at a turkey shoot. I have found that to be true but, in today’s environment, winning a turkey is not as important as it once was. I write this to point out to whoever has the privilege of caring for this gun in the future, to treat it with respect. This is not just a 100 year old gun. It is a family heirloom that served as a survival tool for our ancestors.
