Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/728154
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S • 101 E ach of the chairs circling the campfire held a man who could rightfully be called a gunny. Doing so wouldn't have started a fight, either. We all more-or-less made a living with guns. Some sold them, others wrote about them, and the rest took hunters out to use them. We all loved them. One fellow was doing all the talking, having shot his first elephant that afternoon. No one thought ill of him, but after several stabs at steering conversation from another recounting of the big moment, a khaki-draped troublemaker jumped on a pause in the verbal assault and blurted a question in my direction. "Hey, Dwight. If you could own any gun in the world, what would it be?" Why he dropped that bomb in my lap, I'll never know. When I hesitated, mostly from being unsure where to begin, others stepped up to state their case. The pace became frantic. Back and forth flew references in gunny shorthand, most predictable and requiring not the slightest explanation. "Billy Dixon's," the first volunteered. "York's. No, make that Patton's," challenged the military historian. "Dirty Harry's 29—the 8 3 /8-incher from the "Do- you-feel-lucky" sequence, not the six-and- a-half used in the rest of the movie," piped a movie know-it-all. "Bo Whoop," someone snobbishly blurted. "Wait. I want change from the Dixon to Hammer's B.A.R." "What about the Sousa?" "Patterson's .303, Maycomber or not." The Adventures by dwight vAn brunt AfricA hAd been good to us thAt dAy. then someone ruined everything with A question. conversation collapsed into disrepair. Always polite, the professional hunters waited their turn until the opening salvo had been exhausted. "A double, any double, that hunted ivory in the Lado Enclave" one said reverently. "Baby. It could only be Baker's Baby," suggested the other with confidence. Then it was my turn. I backstoried that in my younger years it was one of John Wayne's movie guns, either the ivory-gripped Single Action Army or 92 he spin-cocks in True Grit; probably the latter. Then it became one of the two Parker Invincibles before just about anyone knew there was a third, and some time thereafter Roosevelt's Holland & Holland double. "I actually owned a pair of Elmer Keith's Colts, but someone needed them more than me," I noted. "I've always wanted a Biesen rifle, one that Al built for O'Connor. I do have a live .270 round that Jack handloaded and took sheep hunting, and another in .416 Rigby he took to Africa. That's as close as I'll get, I'd guess. "For a long time now I've been stuck on either a Bell to Ruark to Selby rifle, or Jim These dream rifles were handcrafted for Jack O'Connor. The top gun, built by Al Biesen, is a .458 Winchester Magnum on a Mark X Mauser action. Tom Burgess made the .416 Rigby Magnum (below) on a Brevex. Supported with exceptional documentation, they are currently offered by the author's company, Sportsman's Legacy.