jwm94 said
Hello Steve,

I think that I might know you from some email correspondence some ten years back and, if you are the same person, you might remember the following excerpts from one email wherein I was exchanging stories about when I was a kid down in East Texas. Anyway, to continue on with the subject of the thread, the 42 and the 1890 began my fascination with both models…the latter model being one that I started collecting about twenty-five years ago:

“Grandpa did own a couple of old shotguns, one being a 12 gauge and the other a 10 gauge. He also kept a small .22 single shot that he would use to kill his hogs. One day when I was about five years old he took me to a pen across the road from the old farm house down in the edge of the woods and there was this huge red hog in it with a nasty disposition. Grandpa made me wait outside the pen as he was very quite and moved exceptionally slow in approaching this big boar, and finally he was standing right in front of him aiming the little .22 at the middle of his head, and with one shot the big hog was dead in his tracks. I’ll never forget this experience, that hog was a mean one and grandpa was none too keen on getting in the pen, much less, facing off with him at such close quarters. It was about this same time that I had a BB gun.

When I was about ten I had gotten a .22 from my mother and a .410 from my father, and I’d sometimes find myself a spot of woods to hunt rabbit, bird, or squirrels in, or sit on a train track trestle that spanned a swampy area with some of my friends depleting the local snake population. Once about this same time my father was selling farm magazines in a rural area in East Texas, and we stopped at a ranch, the owner of which showed us his gun collection after buying some magazines from my father. Now this was about 55 years ago and the old fellow was talking about guns that had cost him thousands of dollars each. And, believe it or not, he handed me a Winchester Model 1890 scoped with what was most likely a Winchester A-5. He then “insisted” that my father find a place and let me shoot it and that when I had finished, then we could bring it back! We did that, too, because the old boy would have it no other way. Today I own several model 1890s, but I was about fifty years old when I bought my first one.”

James  

James – yes, I have some very vague recollection, but of course ten years is long ago.  I don’t recall the story of your grandfather and the mean hog, but it is a good one.  I enjoyed visualizing it as I read it.  The origin of your connection to the M1890 is what this thread is all about.  That must have been a heck of a collection that fellow had.