Great Grandpa’s Gun

I thought I’d share a few pics of a gun that was handed down to me. This was apparently my dad’s grandpa’s shotgun. I found it in a closet a number of years ago, and my dad said I could have it. Cool, I thought!

From my research, it’s a Marlin Model 31 hammerless pump shotgun. It’s a 16 gauge with a 28″ full-choke barrel. It was produced somewhere between 1914-1917 and likely sold for about $18 at the local Sear-Roebuck store.

It’s not pretty, in great shape, nor a “desireable” gun, but it’s been around a long time in my family and likely helped put a lot of meat on the table through some tough times. I have shot it–it is perfectly functional. I have visions of dropping a pheasant with it and then retiring it to the wall for good this year.

I am impressed time two! Not only do you have a nice piece of family history but you have a bench thats empty enough to work on!

The good ole days when even cheap guns were still built like a swiss tank.

Very cool! If that gun could only talk and share all of the hunting memories huh? I wonder how many miles that gun has seen? Great job keeping the family tradition alive. I’m guessing the rooster you put down this fall with this gun will be remembered forever.

I to used to have an old 16ga. Make sure it is for 2 3/4 inch shells . Back then 16 ga had a shorter shell. DO your spent hulls unfold all the way? I had to have my 191? LC Smith chamber lengthened as the hull never unfolded properly and I had blown patterns. My gunsmith said it wasn’t to dangerous but would make horrible patterns. It is cool to down game with a gun with that much family history,

Mwal

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I to used to have an old 16ga. Make sure it is for 2 3/4 inch shells.

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I did have it checked out before I shot it. He said 2 3/4″ were fine

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…but you have a bench thats empty enough to work on!

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Ha! I just cleaned it up recently. It’s not usually that clean

Gotta love the history on her. I’m with Mr. Jigger, I don’t like guys with clean work benches.

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Very cool! If that gun could only talk and share all of the hunting memories huh? I wonder how many miles that gun has seen? Great job keeping the family tradition alive. I’m guessing the rooster you put down this fall with this gun will be remembered forever.

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X2

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…I don’t like guys with clean work benches.

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Jealous? You can use mine…for a fee.

Honestly, I like it clean, but it is rarely that way. I usually clean it up when I need to clean guns, though. It’ll be messed up before long.

Very cool!!!

Very cool Ralph!

Here is an old Remington model 10, I believe it was from around the 1930’s if I remember correctly that looks similar to your Marlin, it was the first 12 gauge pump that Remington came out with. I shot my first deer with that gun, bought it several years ago from a neighbor of my Dads along with an old Sears single shot 22 and a gun rack to boot all for $75! The side by side is also a Remington, not sure how old it is I got it from a guy who use to rent an apartment from me, if I remember right I think I knocked $100 off his rent in trade for the gun.

I have my Great Grandfather’s Winchester Model 1894 shotgun and it is one of the things that I tresure the most. My father had it restored in the 1970s, although the bluing job wasn’t everthing I would want, at lest the gun is in good condition and rust free.

This particular model is a hammer gun, pump action, 12 gauge with the 30 inch barell. The numbers date it to about 1903. Great Grandpa, by all accounts, used it to deadly effect. My Grandfather and my father both actively hunted with the gun until the 1970s, when it finally dawned on dad that it was a little silly to be dragging a gun of that age around the marsh.

It had a reputation for being a “hard hitter” on game birds and upon shooting a few rounds of clays with it, I can see why! It absolutely powders any clay that it touches. None of this flaking a chip of color off the clay, if it hits the clay, it turns it to dust. Otherwise it’s a clean miss.

I haven’t measured the choke, but I suspect it’s beyond what today we would consider a full choke as was common back in the day.

I shudder to think about how many times guns like this are sold off for little or nothing because they “aren’t worth much anyway”. The family heritage in these firearms is priceless to future generations.

My sons will both shoot this shotgun and it will forever remind them of where they came from and of the men that we want them to be. It’s also, I think, an important way for young people to begin to understand the obligation that they have to future generations when it comes to safely handing down both these objects AND the stories that go with them.

Grouse

Anyone have any good recomdations on where to get an old gun restored?

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I shudder to think about how many times guns like this are sold off for little or nothing because they “aren’t worth much anyway”. The family heritage in these firearms is priceless to future generations.

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I agree wholeheartedly. I have an old double barrel shotgun from my grandpa who died before I was born. In all honesty it is worth more as scrap iron than as a gun, but I would not part with it. One of the only things I have from Grandfather.

I plan to build some way to showcase it at my cabin, I just need to finish the other 20 projects first

I found out yesterday that my uncle has my grandpa’s (who recently passed away) old single shot 28 gauge. He was gonna sell it, but thankfully, my dad said NO! So, I got that coming to me, too! I will be interested to see what it is because I have never seen it, although my dad always talks fondly of it.

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I found out yesterday that my uncle has my grandpa’s (who recently passed away) old single shot 28 gauge. He was gonna sell it, but thankfully, my dad said NO! So, I got that coming to me, too! I will be interested to see what it is because I have never seen it, although my dad always talks fondly of it.

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You’ll be forever glad that you saved things like this. It amazes me that people can look at objects that have this much history and NOT see it the tragedy of selling them off, but it happens all the time.

My wife is British, and by that I mean as in actually from England. Her grandmother, in a inexplicable fit of what I’ll charitably call “not thinking clearly”, decided one day that there were too many old things in boxes in the attics. Unfortunately, as is often the case, Grandmother had a very poor sense of history and a very bad feel for the true value of objects.

It’s important to understand at this point that what is “old” to the British and what we in Minnesota consider to be old are two totally different things.

So on her own and with no one knowing it, Grandmother bolstered the family coffers by a few hundred pounds by selling off a family set of silverware dating to the mid 16th century, a tea set from Mrs. Grouse’s great, great, great grandfather, dating to the mid 17th century, and several other irreplaceable objects.

Her view was that anything in attics was simply surplus to requirements. Just goes to show how important it is to get your hands on the heirlooms that you value.

Grouse