Good for you Peter!

Sounds like a good plan. I wish you the best on moving your property sale along. What part of the state are you in?

I like shotguns too, but really for the most part my interest is in the early days of cartridge development. My favorite shotgun is a breech-loading percussion gun. It would seem to be from the late 1820's It likely took paper or skin cartridges and percussion caps. There are keys in the breechfaces which may well have taken a pair of rifle tubes. The engraving scenes are delicate and very crafty, very high grade game scenes wich show excellent control of depth of field, the metal still shows case colors. The gun's an underlever design where the triggerguard and tang are the action lever, much like the Beringer pinfire gun shown at some of the concours events (by *I think* Roger Sanger)

Looks like this one, but mine is a percussion gun, isn't silver on the metal, and has much prettier engraving. Also the barrels on my gun are Damascus, colored in a bloody liver brown, the wood's goregeous.

Although there were truckloads of high-grade british and european guns in centerfire there, much to drool over in that respect, I didn't see much very high grade pinfire or percussion equipment in decent shape-- actually, there was a twenty bore flinter SxS that I refused to handle fearing it'd be as well balanced as I'd suspected. That particular gun was an exception. I didn't even bother asking the price. What a beauty!

Lots of nice bolt guns too, but bolt guns don't really do it for me.

Have fun with the ranch detail. Looks like the state might get some rain in the coming days. Could be good, could be a pain in the ass for the work you have coming. I'll wish the best for you.

--Tinker