If you could have just one rifle back ?

I still regret selling my 1972 Winchester 30-30. The blueing was worn off and the sights filed down, but it was a straight shooter at 100 yrds. Never lost game with it and never a second shot in 30 yrs
I sold it to finance the purchase of a Savage 10 in 243 because my eye sight isnt what it use to be, and i was no longer confident making neck shots at 100 yrds.
My heart shots let them run a ways before dropping. A scope and the 243 have remiedied that, and I dont regret buying that little 1/4 moa jewel. You can bet ill be giving it to my grandson if i can ever let it go.

Rifle: Anschutz 141 sporter .22, Christmas present in 1968, $187

Handgun: 6", blue, Colt Python, sold it with a few other guns to fund my first custom rifle. A Brown Precision, .270, 1989.

Remington Model 700 BDL in 22-250, Heavy Barrel
Shot lights out (.5 MOA) with 55 grain Remington Core Lokt ammo all day long. thought it was too heavy and traded it in on a Model 700 VLSS. What a mistake. haven't found another one yet that will shoot that good!

I don't have a gun that I regret selling, but one time my dad had a Colt Python, that he traded a guy for a metal lathe back in the 80's. The Lathe is probably in a junkyard somewhere, the python is worth somewhere between $2,500-3,000.Something that he would've handed down to me and I really would've enjoyed shooting.

My first rifle was a hand me down gift from my grandfather at age 12. A Mannlicher–Schönauer model 1956 carbine chambered in .270. He bought it in a bar for $200 It came with a Paul Jaeger scope mount (1"" rings). The bolt and trigger are smooth like glass. I would sell my kidney before I sell that rifle! Jack O'conner was 100% right

Sell a gun??? Don't understand the concept??? Gun ownership is a one way door in my world. Appreciate form, fit, function of anything that goes bang. Still have the Daisy BB gun, Stevens Jr rolling block that I learned to shoot in the basement with when Mom went to the grocery store on Saturday mornings, and the Sheridan 5mm air rifle I squirrel hunted with in my urban backyard. Guess that is why I own more safes than most people own guns. I'm a lucky guy!!! Life has been generous to me.
However, I do wish I could have several guns back that were stolen from my Dad's home in 1978....they would be mine now that Dad is gone. A Springfield 1903A3, a sporterized Mauser 8mm which Dad got from an old friend's estate, and a Fox double that I learned to hunt pheasant with. All sentimental items.

M1 Garand. Outstanding condition, great rifle, very accurate. Don't know to this day why I sold it. Lost my **** mind for a moment, wish with heart and soul I had it back. Would kill to have it back, and make it my one gun.

Great stories. For a while I've been wondering if I wanted to make some changes to the Remington Model 700 .30-06 my parents gave me when I was a kid (my brother had a twin to it which is now in the hands of one of his sons). After reading these stories, I wonder if I change it too much if in 20 years I'd wish I had it back the way it was when they gave it to me. Something I need to think hard about before I change calibers. Maybe I wouldn't be changing the spirit of that rifle if I swapped the factory barrel and trued the action.

My one regret in firearm trading is that I let a Ruger Model 77V in 308 get away from me when I needed the money. I bought it used, but it had been bedded and floated. That firearm could give me the smallest groups, center-to-center of any firearm I have owned. It would shoot at .2 or .3 inches with good reloads if I did my job.

reloaderlen said:

Most of us have done it ,sold a rifle for one reason or another and regretted ever since. So if you could have just one and only one back what would it be ?
... Hindsight is 20/20 but if I could get it back my heart would be happy and I surely would make it a deer slaying machine just as the man I sold it to 35 years ago has .
So what's yours ?

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Back during the early 1960s Remington introduced its 6.5mm Rem Mag in the Model 600 short barrel, laminated stock. Both the rifle and the 120 gr ammo were impossible to locate. But after reading and re-reading the G&A field test - I had to have it!

After months of searching, I finally found one in a Nashville, Tenn. sporting goods store, and sent cash with a co-worker to bring it back to me.

I did didn't know short barreled rifles were not suppose to be accurate, so I worked up the rifle's most accurate loading with and 87gr BTHP for spring groundhogs in the Tennessee hills. I later took a smallish 8-pt whitetail (pictured) and my first, with the 120gr factory loads at 100-yards. Later a nice Colorado ant at 300+. All were one-shot and no blood trailing.

My jobs stupidly changed and I sold that rifle and my 6.5mm reloading equipment to my best hunting partner, who would later take countless deer over his lifetime. He left that rifle to his son-in-law, so I simply thought it best to never try to buy it back.

Back in the day, I thought that there would always be Winchester Model 12 shotguns, Model 70 rifles, and Remington 600s chambered for the 6.5mm Rem Mag. But I've since learned otherwise... So my hindsight still remains about "20/20".

Blackwater Red said:

My one regret in firearm trading is that I let a Ruger Model 77V in 308 get away from me when I needed the money. I bought it used, but it had been bedded and floated. That firearm could give me the smallest groups, center-to-center of any firearm I have owned. It would shoot at .2 or .3 inches with good reloads if I did my job.

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Rule #1 - Never sell any firearm in which YOU have marksmanship confidence.

just country said:

morning, I had a german built 240 weatherby. wood
stock, very nice looking. would not shoot under 1.5"
this was in the 70's. new nothing about doing a
rebarrel. still kick myself in the butt.
GBOT TUM

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I have a good friend who bought one of the early .240 Wby Mark V. He's taken nearly anything he wanted to bag in North America with that rifle and factory 100gr Nosler Partitions. The rifle went back to Weatherby while Roy was still alive to be refinished and tuned to speck. Attached was a note about an apparent ammo problem.

A few weeks later the phone rang at his office, it was Roy Weatherby calling.

The rifle was being returned along with several boxes of "personally guaranteed" 100gr Nosler Partition to replace any Weatherby rifle cartridges that he may not have been satisfied with.

Last season he took an very respectable Sonora dark horn with a single 100gr shot.

I've ask him several times about going ahead and giving that "old" Mark V rifle to his grandson, who bagged his first whitetail deer with it. But his silence indicates that he's not yet ready to part with it...

Summer of 66 or 67 I bought my first rifle. 700 rem in 270 win. Put a 2-7 Redfield scope on it and was taught how to reload 130g bullets for it.
It had the best wood I have seen on a over the counter m 700.
This was back when hawks were considered varmints. There is no telling how many I shot. I fell in love with a new 7mm rem mg and traded it in.
I hope we learn from our mistakes. Have had 3 custom rifles built in the last few years all using old 5 or 6 # actions.

I actually have two I would like back - one was a .243 Husqvarna that my Dad bought me for my 8th birthday. Shot my first deer that fall with it, a little 5 point buck (in the beautiful Texas Hill country)that flipped straight over on his back - my Dad and I were so impressed with that little cartridge and rifle ! The other was a Mauser action, custom 7mm Rem Mag that I found and bought cheap while I was in high school. The custom barrel was stamped "Adobe Gun Shop, Silver City New Mexico". Beautiful curly maple stock that had it's share of "use marks" - I refinished the stock myself and it shot like a dream. For some reason ( I think I read too many gun writer stories, HA), I decided I should sell it and buy a Win Mod 70 featherweight in 7 Rem Mag. I still have the model 70 but oh do I miss that custom rig - it was a looker and a shooter! Kind of like that old story of your first love and loss. Shot two nice bull elk with it and thank goodness I have those great memories with that rifle that I will always cherish.