Curl, great story, especially in written form

Well I don't have a story comperable to that one, and I don't have the Captain's elegent prose, but here goes...

I have been interested in double barreled shotguns since I was a little kid. I don't know where it came from, perhaps too many Elmer Fudd cartoons... There was something about the lines, the two triggers, and the look of those two bores (as we all know from Nitro's avatar). But I knew when I got my own shotgun it would be a side by side shotgun. I grew up hunting grouse in the interior of Alaska, and my first gun was an old Stevens 311 12 guage.

Well not too long after my first side by side, that I saw "Out of Africa": now I knew there were side by side rifles!!!

Well then I knew I absolutely NEEDED a double rifle. This was unfortunately reinforced by a visit to Holland and Holland's gunroom and picking up a copy of their catalogue.

Well, that was until I found out how much they costed

I still remember when I tried to buy my first double rifle, I was all ready until I learned that the worker at the shop had got the price wrong. I was all set to pay $1,400 for a 470nitro (thinking well that's a lot of money for college student, but heck its a double rifle), and then the guy finally looked up the price and then said, "Oops, I'm sorry. I got the price wrong, its $14,000 not 1,400." Well, I was still learning about double rifles...

Some years later I was in grad school in Europe and I was determined to buy myself a graduation gift. I thought I would finally get a nice replacement for that old 311. As I looked into shotguns, I found out that new double rifles were not as expensive as the classic British rifles I had seen back in the US. I settled on looking for a side by side 9.3x74r. It fit my price range, the ammunition I could afford/reload, and it seemed like a good useable calibre for North American hunting. I searched gunshops for about a year and looked at all the 9.3x74r rifles I could find: Chapuis, Demas, Gaucher, Merkel, Zoli, Lauronna, Heym, Rizinni, Sabbatti, Rippamonti, etc. I did a small tour of Saint Etienne, the historic French gunmaking region. I visited Rippamonti, Gaucher, and Chapuis. I decided upon Chapuis since it had the most established reputation and I liked their rifle. After some "teething problems" me and my little Cassandra are getting along just fine. Her and I got a nice little spike buck last fall...