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88MauSporter,

Sadly, I was born too late for the glorious years of Indian shikar and by the time I was old enough to get my gun license (in those days you could get one at 16) the government banned hunting for all practical purposes. However, they do have a problem with pigs and some ungulates like Nilgai in several states of India these days and you can shoot them on a crop protection permit. There is a long discussion of this on the Indian hunting threads including an official policy document that has been posted there by a good friend of mine.

However, all is not lost and in recent years, one Indian state, Jharkhand, has sold boar permits to non Indians for the first time since 1976 for $ 50 per animal bagged. There are proposals to extend this to Nilgai as well in Rajashan and Gujarat and possibly Haryana, states which have a problem with these animals and which currently allow them to be shot under permission granted by a Divisional Forest Officer.

My Webley-Scott revolver was a .32 Mark III as I told you and it was one of three (maximum) guns permitted to Indians under Indian law these days. When I owned it, there was a restriction on the ownership of any handgun larger than .32 calibre and on rifles larger than 8mm. These restrictions have been thrown out through litigation in the courts by individual gun owners in recent years and now, Indians can own four guns if they happen to be target shooters. The import of guns is banned unless an Indian has lived abroad and has acquired a firearm during his / her stay abroad and had it for more than a year. Target shooters, again, are exempt from this ban but they can only own target firearms and nothing else.

Here is a link to the Webley rip-off made by the Indian Ordnance Factory. The quality is junk and they don't even blue the revolvers, painting them with some black automobile paint. This link has some more firearms that are manufactured for sale to the public including a Sauer 200 rip off rifle in 30-06 which is equally pathetic in quality. Sadly, India is not a place where anyone wants to buy any gun from the government. You do, however, have a few shops that manufacture muzzleloaders of good quality in the bore calibres both replica Brown Bess type guns and sporting guns including double rifles in 12, 16 and 20 bores with fluid steel and Damascus barrels and this company, Curious House, is the best among the private gunmakers. They sell the bulk of their guns in Europe where I have spoken to several friends who own their products and think well of them. They had plans to sell them in the USA some years ago but I don;t know what happened to them. The company also makes traditional Damascus knives and swords including hunting knives using the 2000 plus year old method of making Wootz type Damascus, a method that some people believe died out in the 17th century. It certainly didn't in India and these guys have been a business since 1815 though as traditional craftsmen of guns, swords, daggers and armour, they have been around for much longer being Sikligars or royal armourers by tradition for centuries. Their products can be found in virtually every big museum in Europe as the British, the French and the Portuguese, the three major powers that ruled over India continuously, and the Danish and the Dutch who were there before being edged out by the other three, took samples of these peoples' work back at a time when Indian steel was technologicaly superior to European until the beginning of the 18th century when modern steels were invented.

Sorry for the long post. Your revolver just brought back some very pleasant memories and I hope that you don't mind my rant on your lovely thread. I used to come to Texas when I ran a business supplying the Federal Government and shipped stuff to the military through Houston but I am now an adult ("geriatric" is how my wife describes it) student at university working towards a PhD, an old ambition of mine. I do have a lot of friends in Dallas-Ft Worth and Houston and most of them came to Texas as students in the early 1980s and stayed on, marrying lovely Texan women. Maybe, sometime when I'm there and if you are close to either of these cities, I could invite you to have some beers with us and our families if you're free? Of course, if you make it to Chicago, the invitation is always open. One of my best friends has a property with blackbuck which he hunts with friends and he has them there because in India itself, blackbuck have been hunted close to extinction. Texas is where many magnificent animals from India will be in the future, no doubt. As someone born in India and a proud resident of this country, I salute your state for its efforts in hunting and conservation.

Good hunting and may many more superb guns come to your gun safe!

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The Ark was made by amateurs. Experts built the Titanic.

Mehul Kamdar

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