Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/496918
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 1 4 1 harles Parker and his sons—Wilbur, Charles, and Dexter—founded Parker Brothers Gun Company in 1868. Beyond the gun's incredible fit and finish, they featured many small but significant advantages. For instance, after 1905 they began using a hardened, yet easily replaceable T-shaped bolt wear-plate that lasted longer and was inexpensive to repair. Many other guns of the time would "shoot loose" with wear. On Parkers, this plate insured that the barrels were held firmly in the frame. Interestingly, Parker replaced this part on any gun sent back to the factory without ever charging the customer. Parkers were owned by Hollywood stars, industry moguls, politicians, authors, generals, and even czars. Clark Gable, Annie Oakley, and Zane Grey owned them. Despite the celebrity, Parker remained a family business until the company was sold to Remington Arms in 1934. Then, production moved from Meridian, Connecticut, to Ilion, New York. Remington continued building Parkers until 1942 when it ceased production to focus on war efforts. Including those made by Remington, just a few more than 242,000 Parkers were ever made. Of course it took talent, convictions and very hard work, but The Parker Gun Company could not have timed its beginnings better. And while the span of its life as a brand was cut short by World War II, the company existed through much of that Golden Age of Hunting and Fishing, from right after the Civil War until the early 1960s. Those of us who lived, hunted, and fished during that time always count ourselves lucky. A businessman and something of a collector, my uncle got his Parker Twenty the way he acquired most anything: a circuitous route of horse-trading. He had swapped a 12-gauge Parker VH for several firearms including a Colt Navy, a German Luger, and a few long guns. Then, as I recall, he traded some of that hoard, plus a few others for the Twenty. I was sorely dissapointed when I first learned he'd traded away his Parker Twelve. I'd shot it a time or two, and though it kicked like the meanest rodeo bull in the arena, at least it fit me. Worse, the transaction took several months to complete, during which I had to shoot doves with my H&R. I guess I was already spoiled before he let me touch the Twenty. y shadow reaches the base of the sparkleberry bush and ignites a small explosion. I'm not sure how many quail are in the covey. In a disorienting thunder, they seem to fly in all directions at once. One passes so close to my head I can feel the wind from its wingbeats. I duck, and somewhere behind me I hear Uncle Crawford's well- worn Lefever roar twice. I regain my composure, swing on a bird flying hard to my left, and fire. I'm a tad late, clipping off a couple of tail-feathers. A good distance out now, he's a sunlit blur against the dark clouds, but I'm right back on him and my second barrel nails him. My first quail! I thank the Lord and mark where he falls. I look for my bird farther up the hill and behind me I hear my uncle, "Dead. Hunt dead. Littlebit! Dead bird!" A minute later he walks up, stuffing two birds in his vest pocket and a shock of unruly dark hair back under his cap. He is lighting his pipe through clenched teeth and asks, "You find your bird?" Proudly, I display my little brown-feathered trophy. It's not silver. It's not gold. But it could not mean any more if it was. An infectious grin spans outward from the smouldering pipe encompassing most of his wide face and I realize that my shot means as much to him as it does to me. "Your first one, isn't it boy?" "Yes sir... that sure is a fine gun." e hunted over Littlebit a few more years, and his son Chris grew old enough to join us. But I always used the Twenty, ever more convinced that one day I'd have my own. Then suddenly, Littlebit was killed by a speeding car on the road just below where I shot my first quail. When Uncle Crawford, a burly Army Air Corps veteran who flew harrowing missions over Germany in World War II, told me about it, he had tears in his eyes. And that he was glad the driver didn't stop. Crawford Grant passed away in 1995. Today, there is a subdivision atop those fields. And the call of the bobwhite has faded. hough I never could, it took me 29 years to begin trying to repay him, to thank him for those quail- hunting trips, for introducing me to the likes of Babcock and Ruark, to stripers and largemouths, to the Mitchell 300, and Shakespeare rods, to Broke Back Pikes and Jitterbugs, to the Ithaca 37 and the Winchester Model 12. And, most of all, to the Parker Twenty. Note: See Sporting Classics "A Tribute To Kings," November/December 1989. C M T W Uncle Crawford and his wife Joyce, in England where they were married at the end of the World War II.