LAST EDITED ON Mar-05-20 AT 06:17 PM (EST)
 
>I'm not entirely sure why my grandfather would've bought one, to tell
>you the truth. He didn't hunt birds—by the 1980s he no longer
>hunted much of anything, having gotten bored with it—and he had
>plenty of other more suitable guns for defending the homestead if he
>needed to do so. (...) My guess would be
>he just kind of wanted one, and one of the abiding virtues of the
>Savage-Stevens product line, then as now, was that they were cheap.

Update: I ran across this photo in a box of old family pictures a little while ago. The focus is not of the best, but you should get the idea.

It's my grandfather, with that very shotgun, a long time ago. Notice that it still has a factory tag on it, down by his right hand. When my father saw this photo, he identified it as having been taken at Christmastime in 1978 or '79, which solves the mystery of why Gramp bought a single-barrel shotgun: he didn't, it was given to him as a Christmas present.

--G.
Also, I just realized that in this photo, Gramp is only maybe two or three years older than I am now. Ye gods.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.