My mosin project is not under a good star but patience is rewarded in the end. two days after the parts had arrived my old gunsmith got a heart attack and he is still bad.
He has not really been able to start working and I think about it to bring the parts to another gunmaker and hand over the work. Not real good style after all these years he has worked for me.

To keep the story alive I will show some pics that belong to this project. Last summer I visit an older gentleman here and asked him if he can make a Mannlicher Schönauer claw mount part for me. He had in the past often made such things for me because he has the machinery.
Coming into his living room to discuss the work with him finding trophies there lost long time ago as I believed. They belonged once to a German who had a farm in Togo before WW 1 and died in the 1950s.
. This man, a friend of my grandfather was known here under the nick name” ape hunter”.
A Phyton skin and the saw of a sawfish also survive the change of times.

My grandmother had have a big sea shell from this old farmer together with an cowry shell as a pair in the porcelain cupboard when I was a child. The African sea shell does not come to me but the cowry which is one of the things my great-grandfather was bringing back from the boxer rebellion in china in 1900.

Here with the ivory I have from him, maybe a cap for a rifle stock and gribs for a Walther TPH in the future.

So many things ended on the dump after the last war. My father is remembering another house here, the walls full with different African trophy’s and native arms.

Must be a priceless fun to load the peta guy’s to dinner having the chimp standing beside the table and make Norwegian steak’s with Chianti wine.

Anyone here having an idea what the chimpanzee will be worth today if its possible to get the CITES papers for it? The owner told me that the trophy is filled with old newspapers from before WW 1.