"The Gun Vise"
The sun cast a bittersweet glow as it slipped quietly beneath the horizon on the final day of whitetail season. Thirty-five minutes after the evening sun meekly disappeared, the woods became too dark to hunt and my season came to its fatigued and unceremonious end. I climbed down from my tree and turned my back on the woods and on a deer season that closed with as little fanfare as it had begun two-and-a-half months earlier. Twilight overtook me before I made it back to the camphouse and covered me and the woods in its limitless starry blanket.
The woods are quiet now. The green fields and cutovers are devoid of any intruders save those that rightfully belong there. Muddy boots are hosed off and put up. Latches on shooting house doors are clasped. Gambrels are hoisted tight and locked. Climbers are folded up and carried out of the woods. And thus the business of winding up the season and readying the deer hunting accoutrements for their annual hibernation gets underway in earnest.
Recently I inherited an old wooden gun vise, brought to me by my mother-in-law after she visited her mother in Louisiana. It belonged to my wife's late grandfather and until it was given to me was no longer of any service to anyone. I was immediately intrigued by the rustic device and enjoyed a sense of excitement over the thought of using it to clean my guns for the first time. I imagined how much more convenient and efficient it would be to have the gun locked down in front of me instead of pointing it in all manner of directions while I pushed fouling out onto the carpet and dripped solvent all over the sofa.
Shortly after the sound of the last note of this season's final stanza faded, I determined to clean my rifle right away rather than put it off indefinitely only to collect a slightly rusty and muddy rifle from the safe days before next year's deer season like I normally do. I set up at the kitchen table with the vise and my gun box in front of me. I set my rifle snugly in the gun vise and turned tight the dial on the clamp to secure the butt.
The vise was made by hand long before it came to be in my possession. It is constructed of solid, heavy wood, probably oak or hickory. Lacquer and varnish that once encased the rust-red paint has largely worn away by years of use. Patches of dry, flaking green felt line the butt clamp and forearm rest, but still supply adequate cushion for the gun.
On the back of the vise just below the butt clamp and above the old metal hook used to hang it up, there has been carved most humbly and nondescriptly, the name “Carrier.” Opening my gun cleaning box, I am carried off by Hoppes and gun oil fumes to an imagined place and time. I never knew the man who hand crafted the vise that now secures my guns when I clean them, even though he was my wife's grandfather for twenty-six years. He was gone before she and I met. For decades, the former Marine drill sergeant used the vise while he made dozens of custom rifles and guns for himself and others in a spartan little shop just off the carport at his home in Amite, Louisiana. In its present state the shop is little more than a resting place for tools, woodworking implements, half-finished gun stocks, and memories. Today the shop peers mutely out at the old barn behind the house, obsolete.
I would have enjoyed watching the big man hunched over the bench as he carved the oak leaves and acorns that adorn the fore end of the lever action Winchester .308 my wife inherited. When she shot her first deer with the gun two years ago, I imagined how proud he would be to know that her hands held up the same checkered stock behind the oak leaves where his hands had done for so many years when it was his. His nexus to the weapon was again brought to the fore when my wife's brother, his grandson, harvested an enviable eight point buck at my camp in the Alabama Blackbelt in December - his first ever.
Snapping out of my pondering, I apply a final coat of gun oil and wipe down the rifle, taking care to get the cloth into the nooks between the bottom of the scope and the top of the receiver where pesky spots of rust are sure to appear first. I retrieve the vise from its spot on the kitchen table and take it to the garage where I hang it on a nail by the same hook that held it up on the wall back in the old shop in Amite. I like to think the great man who created the vise, as pedestrian as it is, knows what a special and appreciated heirloom it has become. Feeling the vise in my hands and rubbing oil into my guns fastened securely in its grips provides me with a silent connection to a man I never knew, but one I would have loved and with whom I know I would have enjoyed sharing time in the woods, in front of the fireplace and in that dusty old shop overlooking the barn.
(c) Roger Guilian 2008
The woods are quiet now. The green fields and cutovers are devoid of any intruders save those that rightfully belong there. Muddy boots are hosed off and put up. Latches on shooting house doors are clasped. Gambrels are hoisted tight and locked. Climbers are folded up and carried out of the woods. And thus the business of winding up the season and readying the deer hunting accoutrements for their annual hibernation gets underway in earnest.
Recently I inherited an old wooden gun vise, brought to me by my mother-in-law after she visited her mother in Louisiana. It belonged to my wife's late grandfather and until it was given to me was no longer of any service to anyone. I was immediately intrigued by the rustic device and enjoyed a sense of excitement over the thought of using it to clean my guns for the first time. I imagined how much more convenient and efficient it would be to have the gun locked down in front of me instead of pointing it in all manner of directions while I pushed fouling out onto the carpet and dripped solvent all over the sofa.
Shortly after the sound of the last note of this season's final stanza faded, I determined to clean my rifle right away rather than put it off indefinitely only to collect a slightly rusty and muddy rifle from the safe days before next year's deer season like I normally do. I set up at the kitchen table with the vise and my gun box in front of me. I set my rifle snugly in the gun vise and turned tight the dial on the clamp to secure the butt.
The vise was made by hand long before it came to be in my possession. It is constructed of solid, heavy wood, probably oak or hickory. Lacquer and varnish that once encased the rust-red paint has largely worn away by years of use. Patches of dry, flaking green felt line the butt clamp and forearm rest, but still supply adequate cushion for the gun.
On the back of the vise just below the butt clamp and above the old metal hook used to hang it up, there has been carved most humbly and nondescriptly, the name “Carrier.” Opening my gun cleaning box, I am carried off by Hoppes and gun oil fumes to an imagined place and time. I never knew the man who hand crafted the vise that now secures my guns when I clean them, even though he was my wife's grandfather for twenty-six years. He was gone before she and I met. For decades, the former Marine drill sergeant used the vise while he made dozens of custom rifles and guns for himself and others in a spartan little shop just off the carport at his home in Amite, Louisiana. In its present state the shop is little more than a resting place for tools, woodworking implements, half-finished gun stocks, and memories. Today the shop peers mutely out at the old barn behind the house, obsolete.
I would have enjoyed watching the big man hunched over the bench as he carved the oak leaves and acorns that adorn the fore end of the lever action Winchester .308 my wife inherited. When she shot her first deer with the gun two years ago, I imagined how proud he would be to know that her hands held up the same checkered stock behind the oak leaves where his hands had done for so many years when it was his. His nexus to the weapon was again brought to the fore when my wife's brother, his grandson, harvested an enviable eight point buck at my camp in the Alabama Blackbelt in December - his first ever.
Snapping out of my pondering, I apply a final coat of gun oil and wipe down the rifle, taking care to get the cloth into the nooks between the bottom of the scope and the top of the receiver where pesky spots of rust are sure to appear first. I retrieve the vise from its spot on the kitchen table and take it to the garage where I hang it on a nail by the same hook that held it up on the wall back in the old shop in Amite. I like to think the great man who created the vise, as pedestrian as it is, knows what a special and appreciated heirloom it has become. Feeling the vise in my hands and rubbing oil into my guns fastened securely in its grips provides me with a silent connection to a man I never knew, but one I would have loved and with whom I know I would have enjoyed sharing time in the woods, in front of the fireplace and in that dusty old shop overlooking the barn.
(c) Roger Guilian 2008
posted by Days Afield Host | 5:25 AM
