Before he retired, my father worked in a research lab that would bring in doctors for a couple of years and then send them home. A lot of them would get into the whole "Montana Experience" and buy everything from fly rods to elk rifles, and then sell the gear when they went back to Bethesda or wherever.
One of the Docs who went that way was out hunting one day and evidently fell and broke his leg. The way I got the story, he ended up dragging himself out to his truck, scratching the heck out of his A-Bolt's shiny finish on the way. Since that pretty much ended his hunting career, he sold the rifle to dad for a not unreasonable amount. You can read that as "Dad pretty much stole this rifle".
What he handed over to me a couple of years ago is a blued 30-06 with gold engraving on the receiver and "Medallion" on the left side, nice wood (once it had been refinished), and almost no signs of use. Dad pretty much traded shooting critters with a rifle for shooting them with a camera shortly after he made the deal, and I doubt he put more than a box of shells through it in the years he had it.
To be honest, I haven't fired it since he gave it to me. Is there such a thing as a rifle that's too nice to hunt with? I've been thinking that I should get this one set up with a good load and use it this year, then set it and its ammo back in the vault to wait for a time when I might need it. To that end, I've spent the last several nights prepping brass and deciding what powders and bullets I'd like to try in it, and thoroughly enjoying myself.
