Wow! 1961 issue of guns magazine

[xl_target]

Here are some pages from a 1961 Guns magazine.
$9.95 for a surplus SMLE, $25.95 for a surplus Mauser, $ 49.95 M3 Grease guns (full auto), $119.95 20mm Finnish Lahti Anti tank gun. etc.
It is worth looking through this magazine just for the advertisements. It is enough to make a grown man cry.

Have fun! http://www.gunsmagazine.com/1961issues/G0861.pdf

[dr.jayakumar]

thanks for sharing x_l,
you always come up with something interesting.
it is enough for me to cry too.
regards

[Vikram]

Excellent find,XL.Thank you for posting.


Best-
Vikram

[timmy]

XL, there are a lot of things that conjure up memories for me in browsing through this magazine. First, of course, would be the passing of the famous movie star Gary Cooper, who was from Montana (something every Montanan knows). He was very much a sportsman (in more ways than one!) and I see he's varminting with a Winchester Model 70.

The Browning ad is very familiar as well.

The page with the gun ads in the front is from Klein's in Chicago. Klein's was famous as the place where Lee Harvey Oswald mail ordered a scoped Carcano that was used to kill President Kennedy, and ushered in the modern era of gun control in the USA. My Dad would often go to Klein's at lunch time, since his office was only a short distance away in the Loop (the downtown business district of Chicago). Dad would go when there was an ice hockey game in town (Dad loved hockey) because the players from the visiting team would often visit there. Why? Dad always told about Gordie Howe, a famous star with the Detroit Red Wings, who would unabashedly steal merchandise from the shelves and shovel it into his pockets. Klein's did nothing, because they know that Howe's presence in the store brought in many customers -- it was worth it to let him steal what he could carry out for the business he generated!

I had one of those 6.5 mm Swedish carbines -- it was a very nice little gun to carry around.

How do you like the Weatherby 300 Magnum ad? My uncle bought one of those when a fellow on a hunting trip to Wyoming showed him how well it shot compared to his Remington .30-60 semi-auto. Uncle Lambert used that Weatherby to take a polar bear and a grizzly, both large, in Alaska back in the 60s. My uncle was quite a hunter, and how much of a hunter he was is demonstrated by the movies taken of him shooting each bear: They were taken by his guide (who held the movie camera instead of a backup gun). Uncle Lambert had many stories about those hunts, but the most noteworthy one I recall was that he was up in Pt Barrow for his polar bear hunt at the same time Fred Bear, the famous bow hunter, took his record trophy. Uncle Lambert's movies included showing the Native Americans washing the hide in a hole in the ice. He saw Fred Bear's hide being washed through the ice as well, and said that there were bullet holes in it...

But back to the Weatherby, note the typical (for the time) Weatherby scope, which has both adjustments on the top. (Uncle Lambert's had a Bausch and Lomb; he would use no other.)

The Gary Cooper article was interesting, but check out the Hunter's Lodge ad on page 34: the big deal rifle to have, as I recall, was the short "Persian Mauser" 98. The examples that I saw of these guns were always in exquisite condition with a beautiful crest on the receiver ring.

It's funny: the magazine represents a time when most hunting rifles used iron sights and a heavy gat to pack as a "carry gun" was a .38 Special snubby. I guess that all these magazines must have marked me as a young person, because I find my thinking returning to those old standards, just as a 1964 Ford Galaxie 500 XL automobile still seems to be a pretty new car.

Thanks for sharing the link!

[brihacharan]

Hi Guys,
> Thanks for bringing back old memories...
> I used to buy back issues of magazines like 'Field & Stream', 'Guns' etc..from an old newspaper vendor near Breach Candy in Mumbai for Rs.5/- way back in the 60's!!!
> I used to gloss & glean over hunting pics & stories & ads of various hunting rifles & shotguns many times over... boy! what a thrill it was then.
> I had also read several articles by Fred Bear the famous bow hunter ... I was truly surprised to read that the skin of the bear he shot had 'bullet holes' in it!!!! Maybe he used a gun instead of a bow!
Cheers
Briha

[ckkalyan]

Thank you for sharing this gem xl_target - sheer nostalgia!

I can confidently declare that I would not have read such publications hot off the press (1961 being my year of my birth), but such magazines definitely did percolate down to me eventually, in some form or shape (mostly tattered, moth-eaten, yellowed...) in an old bookshop, years later, from Crawford Market - BBY or some such place. I used to peruse them avidly!

[xl_target]

Tim,
Thanks for the stories on Klein's and the Weatherby.
Did not know that about the Weatherby scopes, I learn something new every day.


Briha and Kalyan,
I have to admit also poring over old issues of Field & Stream, in between bouts of Corbett and Capstick and Kenneth Anderson. Most of those magazines were old and beat up but they opened up a world of hunting, fishing and guns to me. When I went on my first hunt in the US, it seemed somehow so familiar. As a young kid growing up in India, I never dreamed that I would someday be able to partake in America's bounty.

[ckkalyan]

Briha and Kalyan,
When I went on my first hunt in the US, it seemed somehow so familiar. As a young kid growing up in India, I never dreamed that I would someday be able to partake in America's bounty.

xl_target - Pure Déjà vu - huh! Somehow connected....