An Affair with a Gun

A strange idea to the vast majority of people perhaps but to me this is no ordinary gun. A bespoken gun hand built to my specifications by the Grulla gun makers of Eilbar Spain. Built on a stock blank I selected, shaped to my dimensions, with hand engraved sidelocks, a skeleton buttplate, and sideclips, she is a 16 gauge, the perfect upland gauge in my eyes. Too pretty, some say, to carry into the grouse tangles with the briers, rocks, and steep terrain that make up good grouse cover in my Alleghenys, to me she was made to use. What ever scratches and dings she acquires will give her character and show future generations that she was owned and used by a grouse hunter and not safely tucked away in a gunsafe. To some a gun is only a tool, too be used for a month or two a year and then put away until the next hunting season comes along, But to me my little Grulla deserves more than that. When I pick her up she becomes an extension of my body. On warm summer evenings when I pull her from the gunsafe she becomes alive in my hands, and the memories of past hunts, the hits and misses, come flooding out of my conscious to bring a smile to my lips. With these pictures I share just a few of the many memories my little Grulla and I share.