Several people have written to me, asking about shooting the lovely Ruger Redhawk .45 Colt I got hold of a while back.
Here’s its story.
One of the things I do whenever I get a new gun is to take the Son&Heir to the range to acquaint him with more guns, because otherwise he’d just shoot his 1911 and Ruger Mk II pistols till the end of time. Occasionally that backfires on me — I’ve lost my treasured Princess Inge (Swedish Mauser) and a Marlin Mod 60* to him this way. And that’s what happened here.
We’d finished shooting about three or four different guns at Mission Ridge (his home range), and when I was packing up I suddenly noticed that the Redhawk had gone missing. When I asked him if he’d seen it, the Son&Heir said casually, “Oh, that’s going home with me.” (Said without a hint of guilt or remorse too, I have to say.)
When I half-remonstrated with him, he simply shrugged and said, “I’m going to shoot it a lot more than you are,” followed by the killer: “…and I’m going to inherit it from you anyway.” And then the final, unanswerable statement: “This way, I’m not going to run the risk of you trading or selling it, either.”
He loves shooting it, and of course he shoots it far better than I can, the little shit.
Oh well. I guess if I do want to shoot it some more, I can always ask him to bring it to the next range session.
What really got up my nose was that just the day before I’d gone to Bass Pro and acquired what we may call a “decent sufficiency” of .45 Colt ammo — so of course that disappeared into his trunk as well.
Kids… [he said proudly]
*For some reason, I cannot seem to hold onto a Marlin 60.
No sooner have I got a new one, when somebody needs one really badly and off it goes. Bought one, lent it to a friend, bought another, lent it to Adopted Daughter, same result: gone forever. In the most recent of these occurrences, the S&H was going off plinking with some of his old shooting club buddies, so he borrowed yet another mode 60 from me because all he had was a bolt-action Marlin 981T (his first-ever rifle).
When I asked how the shooting went, he mumbled something about the joys of shooting a semi-auto .22 rifle and had the decency to ask if he could keep the 60.
Oh well, could have been worse: he could have “borrowed” my brand-new Ruger 10/22…