Daddy set out a dented, white bucket about 20 yards from the tailgate of his rusty Dodge D50, had me post up on the side of the truck, then handed me his Remington 870 Wingmaster. I was familiar with the gun. Daddy kept it propped in the corner next to the bed, just in case bad guys came creeping around at night. I’d been taught from my toddler years not to touch it.
That might be why it felt so wrong in my hands. It was also too much gun for 12-year-old me, who barely tipped the scales at 80 pounds—and only after a good meal. The stock had a deep crack, and it wobbled from side to side. The two-inch butt pad Daddy had added to “help tame the kick” made the thing longer than my short, skinny arms could manage. But I was determined. I wanted to be a hunter more than pretty much anything.
I missed the bucket clean on the first shot. Same with the second. Daddy asked if I was even aiming. On the third try, I peppered it sufficiently for him to take the gun from me, saying, “Good enough.” That was all the qualification I got. The next morning, I was in the woods with him, carrying a shotgun that was too heavy and had brutalized my shoulder.
The Everyman's Gun
There’s nothing rare about a Remington 870. Millions of them were made, and just about every hunter I know kept one—on a truck-cab gun rack, in a glass-fronted case in the den, or leaning in the corner like Daddy’s did. It was a gun that belonged to average Joes. It was a tool as common as a hammer, and just as useful and reliable.
The first deer I killed with that particular 870 wasn’t much to brag on, just a scrawny four-pointer with brow tines so stunted they looked more like pimples than antlers. I dropped that buck on a cold, gray day in Surry County, Virginia, the kind where the rain never quite turns to snow but chills your bones anyway. My first shot was nowhere near clean. The copper-coated 00s found his front legs. What followed was messy and hard. By the time it was over, I was crying hard from the heaviness of the whole affair.
Daddy didn’t dwell on the misses or the suffering. He hugged me, painted two stripes of blood across each cheek, and declared me a deer hunter. It hadn’t been graceful, but it was enough.
That ragged old 870 kicked hard, but it left me with a lesson that landed even harder. Hunting wasn’t clean, and taking a life was never simple. But in the look on my father’s face, which was equal parts pride and relief, I saw what that beat-up old scattergun would come to mean. It was more than a shotgun. It was my ticket into his world.
A Forever Gun
Years later, after Daddy passed, that old Remington 870 ended up in my hands again. I had grown. I wasn’t the scrawny pre-teen who first shot at that bucket from the back of a rusty pickup. But it still felt heavy—but in a different way. It carried every one of those cold mornings, every lesson, every shoulder-bruising shot he coached me through. It had become far more than a tool. It was a reminder of the woods we walked together and the quiet, stubborn way he taught me how to be a hunter.
Holding it then, I realized just how much it mattered that it wasn’t my gun from the beginning. I hadn’t spent a dime on it. I wasn’t the one who unboxed it, shiny and new and full of promise. But in that moment, the weight of all the history it had carried before Daddy first handed it to me made every groove, every nick, every worn spot feel more real and more mine than any fresh-off-the-shelf firearm ever could.
The smooth groove worn into the pump handle, the wiggling stock, the chips in the once-smooth walnut weren’t flaws. They were marks of experience. A brand-new gun doesn’t hum with the mornings it carried someone through frost or the evenings they spent lovingly rubbing it down with Rem Oil by the dim light of the kitchen.
A hand-me-down demands something from you. You handle it carefully, out of respect for the history it’s already lived. Every miss, every hit, every bruised ego, every moment of gratitude feels shared.
That’s what makes a gun a “forever gun.”
In excellent condition, a 1970s Remington 870 Wingmaster might fetch $500. But Daddy’s old pump-action is far from pristine. It still has every crack and worn groove it had when I shot from that rusty tailgate. The butt pad is still there, too. But somewhere along the way, he made some other modifications, transforming it into a slug gun by swapping out the barrel, topping it with a scope, and spraypainting the whole thing a god-awful forest green.
It’s beautiful, and I wouldn’t sell it for a million dollars.
The value of that Wingmaster can’t be measured by price. How do you put a price tag on memory, shared history, or all the lessons that beat-up old scattergun has picked up over the years?
In a world where new models come out every year, sleek, fast, and modern, it’s easy to forget the quiet power of the old ones. The ones you never bought, the ones someone else carried and trusted before you did. The ones they trusted you with when you didn’t have any stories to tell. Those are the guns that last.
The best thing about that beat-up old gun is that the story doesn’t end with me. My son carried it into the North Carolina woods the first season after Daddy died, making a crackerjack shot on a little spike. Every groove, nick, and worn spot rested under his hands. Some were from me. But more of them were put there by his grandfather. That gun has outlived its first owner, survived my clumsy early hunts, and has now started a new chapter.
And for me, it’s a solid reminder that the most important things we inherit aren’t things at all.