THE CRUX by Scott McMillion
Triggered Treasure Generating memories with a gorgeous old gun
I
’ve owned guns since I was 12 years old, when I used paper route money to buy a couple of rifles. Though they aren’t valuable, I wouldn’t sell those first guns for anything, but I might give them away someday. Some of my other guns don’t see much use, so they don’t mean much to me, including a pistol I bought for $100 from a young reprobate of my acquaintance, who had carved an X in the business end of his bullets because he thought he could make them more deadly. I didn’t really want the pistol, but I didn’t want him to have it, either. I knew he’d just buy dope with the money, but I figured he couldn’t rob a liquor store with a gram of coke, meth, whatever. Now it sits in seclusion, as my other guns do most of the year. They are mostly tools that I use in the fall, when I hunt birds and big game. In a way, they aren’t so very different from the saws and drills in my garage: I grab them when I need them. But unlike the other tools, the guns I use every year are fraught with memories: animals killed or missed, companions long gone or coming back next year, places I’ve come to know. It’s serious stuff, these memories: friendship, family, taking life, filling freezers. Like my other tools, the guns have a few nicks and scratches, but they all work just fine, so the dings never bothered me. The normal signs of wear and tear were okay for any gun, as a matter of fact—until my beloved father-in-law, Phil, gave me a shotgun that’s worth more than my pickup truck. Not that my pickup is worth much: it’s 15 years old and has its shares of nicks and scratches, too. But that shotgun is a beautiful thing. It’s almost like a fine landscape painting, in that I notice new details every time I study it. Handcrafted by Prussian artisans in 1885, it had belonged to Phil’s grandfather. Its rich walnut stock bears meticulous checkering, and intricate engraving dances across both barrels and the other metal parts. The sight bead is ivory and the butt plate
is carved from the horn of a cape buffalo. Brass inlays in the steel breech and trigger guard portray hunting dogs and game birds in many poses. It works perfectly, rises to my shoulder and cheek in a natural way, and the only sign of wear is on the outside of the trigger guard, which tells me that Phil’s grandfather put in some hours with this gun across his chest, finger flexed, prepared to shoot. When Phil gave it to me one
Chad Harder
Christmas, he had a simple request: use it. The hunting tradition had died out in his branch of the family, but he knew it still lived in mine. Phil didn’t want his ancestor’s gun to spend another generation hanging on a wall. While his gift delighted me, the request to take the gun into the field gave me a slight case of the yips. Most of the bird hunting I do, in central and eastern Montana, requires crashing Continued on page 56