I am kinda mad at Bear

In 1967, I was making $8k, and working my ass off. But I was living like a king, hunting, fishing, traveling, backpacking, reloading, skiing in Europe, fast cars, faster women.

But I was single, and had no overhead, no honey-dew lists, no house, just a fly rod, a field champ Brittany Spaniel, and a double 12 ga.

Those were great years.   Back then, if you were single you paid exactly twice what a married couple paid....but even with outrageous taxes...life WAS good then.

............... those old prices do make one sad nowadays Wingmaster yup!

shesch.......BEAR......back then I was still in school when you was king of the hill.......

I've had a bunch of M-17's I think they are in the top three handguns ever made. I don't usually stick my neck out on a statement like that  but that's one I will stand behind.

I've had at least 3 different M-17's and I've found them to be the same or better than gold. I paid between $175-250 about 20 years ago and made over $100 on each of them. I think I would have been much better off doubling what I paid for them and just sitting on them?

I'm sure I've told this story before but I can't help but tell it again.

Back when I was a flight instructor I had a Norwegian student that was homesick for shooting. We were in-between Dallas & Ft. Worth TX. I knew of this old railroad tressel that I had shot at before. We parked my old '68 Ford XL convertable about 400 yards away from the tressel and walked into the wild. We shot that gun (M-17) and a couple others and started to notice more than the usual helicopter traffic. The reason heilo trafic wasn't unusual was that we were only a  mile or so from the "Bell Helicopters" factory. They were always testing new ones off the line. The thing I noticed was that this one was circling us. Not a normal test flight. We started walking back to the car and noticed the copter hovering above us. Once we got back to the car the Bell landed, the pilot got out with the engine still running and walked over to us. It soon turned into an international incident when my Norwegeian student didn't have a drivers licence.  In Texas at that time you could hire a lawyer to expounge your ticket for about 130% of what the ticket would cost. Cost me about $175. It cost the police about $400 to let that copter idle while he wrote me a ticket. The savings coming from insurance premiums and lack of any record. When you sart saying contact my embassy the cops start to quiver. In the end we were more than a half a mile from anything and while we didn't know it were still inside the city limits but we were trying to do everything we could not to bother anyone and just pop off a few rounds...

My newer 617 10 shot. Not the same as the big N frames.

DD

Fella's;

Bear, he said a 68 Ford convertible.  I seem to recall that they were available in the same color as those propellers on his beanie hat.  Which is as good a reason as any to arrest him as a public nuisance, the shooting probably had nothing to do with it.

Were you aware that you can still get an S&W Kit Gun?  It's the model 317, 8 shot, and the infamous J-lock.  Actually, I like the model 63 J-frame better, and it's also available these days.  Basically it's the same gun as the 317 with a 3" or 5" barrel and without the goofy neon plastic sights.  I'd expect the retail on any of 'em to be around $650.00 maybe.

900F