Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/528216
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 5 0 made a pilgrimage to Boron, to the dilapidated World War Two Quonset hut on the main drag that is home to B. Searcy & Company, maker of the All-American Double Rifle. It is a curious mecca in many ways. If you want the absolute finest, most accurate, most reliable world-class, bolt-action rifle made today, you look to America where there are men who can build a completely custom firearm, unequalled in quality anywhere, to your specifications. But when it comes to double rifles, those who are able to afford such things have always looked to Europe. Purdey, Holland & Holland, Westley Richards, Rigby, Hartmann & Weiss, Lebeau-Courally, Merkel, Krieghoff, Beretta, Chapuis, Heym, and a few others, all build excellent, world-renowned double guns, but it is a team effort: one man for the barrels, another—or a sub-team— for the action, another for the stock, and in each case, apprentices learn their trade by working alongside the team leader and doing tasks under the master's supervision. It's a time-honored tradition in Europe in multiple trades, from gunmaker to furniture-maker to violin-maker, a way to pass specific skill sets on from generation to generation. Butch Searcy is America's sole maker of conventional double- barreled rifles. Not only that, he is one of the few craftsmen in the world who builds custom double rifles for dangerous game. Because Butch Searcy is an American, he does things a little differently than the tradition-bound Europeans. For one, Butch never served an apprenticeship; he never even went to gun-making school, for that matter. He wanted to build rifles, so he started building rifles. End of story. For another thing, he does it all himself. With the exception of the engraving, which he does send out, he makes each double gun himself— lock, stock, and barrel, to borrow a phrase. Butch CNC-machines his own receivers. The barrels are either mono-block or chopper-lump, your option, but he makes them. And Butch fashions his own stocks. More than that: many years ago he bought the finest pantograph available, decided it wasn't good enough, and built his own. He is also, as of this writing, the only man in the world who offers the option of a true Rigby-Bissell rising-bite action. (A custom maker in Germany builds a square version, but only Butch builds the original oval.) If you are unfamiliar with this action—and most people have never even laid eyes on one—it was, as its name implies, co-patented by John Rigby and a little-known English gunmaker by the name of Thomas Bissell. Butch describes it as, essentially, a Greener cross-bolt turned on its side, but it's actually an oval-shaped extension of the rib that locks into a corresponding recess in the top of the standing breech, where it surrounds a central post. It's famous for being exceptionally strong and exceptionally complex, the latter being, in part, why it hasn't been made by anyone since the 1920s or possibly the 1930s (depending on which account you choose to believe). But Butch makes them. E ven at an early age Butch Searcy was obsessed with guns and hunting, though he never intended to become a custom gunmaker. "I wanted to become a wildlife biologist," he told me over lunch at a local Mexican restaurant where they served a salsa that made steam come screaming out of my ears, "and I got my college degree, but I couldn't get a job. So I went to work at the [borax] mine, and then I worked as a heavy equipment operator and welder, though by 1975 I was building silhouette rifles on the side. "I taught myself. I bought some second-hand equipment from a gunmaker who was going out of business, including a lathe and drill press, chambering reamers, grinders, buffers, a small milling machine, that sort of stuff. He gave me some direction on how to S earcy chambered this Deluxe sidelock under-lever double in .470. It features English-style rose-and- scroll engraving by Ron Collings of Vista, California.