I shot a few rounds of skeet this morning and had a blast with my Sterlingworth S & U. As I was closing up the houses another guy showed up who wanted to shoot so I told him I'd shoot another round with him. I have met this guy a few times and hunted my clubs lease with him once. He has a beautiful, professionally trained dog that he literally runs after in the woods......I tried explaining that its a pointer, he's trained so well that he is a statue until you tap his head, and that running with a loaded firearm in the woods (regardless of a mechanical safety) is NOT SAFE. I havent hunted with him since.
That one experience should have set off an alarm when I saw him un-case a SxS this morning. I asked him what he was shooting and he told me his old fox. Now I was excited. I look it over and it turned out to be a 12 ga Sterlingworth in decent shape. The barrels had a nice blue/brown patina but were almost fully colored, the case coloring was gone on the receiver but not polished off and it had the look of an honest old sxs. That's were the good news ends.
He bragged about refinishing the stock and I could see from an arms length that he'd sanded the checkering all but off, the top tang screw must have gotten buggered up somehow becasue it had a bright nickel philips head screw jammed into the recess and if all that wasnt bad enough he pulled out a box of STS Nitro handicap ammo....
I gave him a box of my 3/4oz hand loads and spent the whole round talking up RST shells hoping he'd take the bait. His gun must have been an early gun as the shells would sometimes stick in the chamber and he would hit the barrels with his palm to force the breech open. I mentioned he should try the 2.5" shells as it was likely his chambers were 2 5/8" or shorter. he didnt seem to get it.
Like Ron white says, "You can't fix stupid"
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