Which ones do I miss? Why, ALL of them!
Which ones do I miss the most? Probably the ones I have spent the most time and often money obtaining. I just realized that, without any real concious intent, the majority of my guns are either completely discontinued guns, or discontinued variations of guns still in production.
Anyone who develops an interest in historical guns automatically finds themself in the "discontinued" category.
Milsurps, by definition are no longer current use and normally current production.
Most of us will never get the chance to own many those "special" guns that we have always been interested in. Sometimes we can scratch that itch with a reproduction, or something similar.
So many great guns have been discontinued over the years it is difficult to decide.....
I think the ones I miss the most are not a single gun, but a class of gun, those that were built all over the country by often gifted gunsmiths (NOT Bubba) who just built fine rifles and never became "name" smiths doing national business. They used to be all over, now only a few, here and there.
Todays modular designs are technically better, being much more versatile, plastics and alloys are much more ...efficient. Accuracy is much improved from that bygone era, generally. Or at least it seems to be that way to me, I read it on the Internet.
It used to be that a MOA rifle a real good gun, and anything that did even a little better was a real gem, and not to be rid of lightly. It usually took a lot of work to get a gun to shoot that well. Today, it seems to be much easier to do it.
But, even so, what I miss that (mostly) seems to be discontinued is the soul of the steel, the marriage of metal and wood. The personality that each one had, the individuality of the wood, those kinds of things. Oh, I can still get them today, newly done, but it does cost, and usually takes quite some time as well. I miss when it was common, cheap and easy, maybe the most.
