"This Old Gun" Series
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"This Old Gun" Series

There are shotguns that shine under the glass of collectors' cabinets, and then there are ones that shine in memory.

The following collection of stories are a tribute to the latter: The guns passed down across generations. The single-shots with checkering worn smooth by seasons gone by. The pumps with bluing rubbed thin where a grandfather's hand once gripped tight.

In these stories, you'll meet the guns that taught a boy reverence for the outdoors, that stood by a father's side until they became his son's, and that rose again from a dusty barn to once more walk the uplands.

These are stories of first hunts and final gifts, of fathers and sons, of legacy and loss.

Each gun is a marker in time — a reminder of where we come from and who we carry with us every time we step into the field.

These old guns are more than steel and walnut. They are family. They are memory.

They are our connection to wild places and to each other.

— Ryan Sparks, Quail Forever Journal Editor

A Tale of Two Shotguns

 

Story and Photos by Tell Judkins

When I was 13, my mother remarried. Not long after, we moved from a small town to outside an even smaller one in rural Oklahoma. To say my world changed is an understatement. I was turned loose in the outdoors and ultimately adopted by the man she had married.

Shortly after moving to our new home in the country, I watched him call a bobwhite onto the porch railing one afternoon. That moment started my life on a collision course that has brought me to where I am today.

My new father introduced me to quail, the land, and how to see the world with a hunter's eye — and perhaps nothing holds those memories more vividly than two of his old shotguns.

First, a single-shot break-action Revelation Model 350A in .410. The gun was modeled after the Stevens 94D. As far as its origin, I'm sad to say I don't know.

They were "store brand" shotguns for Western Auto, sold from the late 1940s through the 1960s. It was made prior to the Gun Control Act of 1968 — so its stories aren't cataloged by a serial number, but rather by the memories that live through it.

It is about as simple as a shotgun can be, and it was my go-to firearm for any unwanted critters that wandered too close to the house in my teens. I can't recall how many times I heard my dad say, "if that gun could count all the quail it's seen."

A couple years after dad's passing, I made it my mission to take the old gun out and shoot a bird over my German shorthair, Carson.

I never got to hunt alongside my dad, but taking his gun afield felt like carrying a part of him with me.

I'm not a crack-shot wingshooter, so I didn't expect my mission to be completed quickly, but on opening day of the 2023 season, we did just that on a piece of public land in western Oklahoma. Since then, dad's old .410 has been the only shotgun I've taken afield for quail.

The second shotgun of his I hesitate to call "old" since we share the same vintage. It is a 1988 Browning Auto-5 16-gauge — "The Sweet Sixteen," as it is fondly referred to.

That gun holds a somber story that echoes a sentiment many quail hunters can relate to: He bought it new and stowed it away untouched, in its case — waiting for "the quail to come back."

The annual boom-and-bust cycle had claimed another quail hunter, but he was prepared for the bobwhite's reprise. I doubt this will be the year I load the first-ever shell into the gun, but it stands as a stark reminder of the fragility of our upland traditions.

Someday, I hope to take that Sweet Sixteen afield and experience what he kept waiting for all those years. Until then, I'll keep carrying his old .410, knowing that every quail I flush carries his memory forward, still walking the uplands together — father and son.




 

Tell Judkins is a Quail Forever member and the Upland Game Bird Biologist for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. He lives in northcentral Oklahoma with his wife and bird dogs.

This story originally appeared in the Fall 2025 issue of Quail Forever Journal