Life by neglect

[Questor]

There's a guy in my bullseye league that has been shooting bullseye for at least 30 years. He's got a custom 1911 that is so worn and blemished that it looks like it was recovered from a sunken ship. That is the grungiest looking firearm I've ever seen. Maybe he cleans the innards once in a while. Maybe not. It's great to see a gun so heavily used and still performing well. For example, the old-style beavertail is all rusty. The black icky mass that he holds onto when aiming probably has a substrate of custom grip. Either that, or he's sculpted the hand goo over the years to have a thumb rest on it. It's hard to tell. The other visible metal does have some bluing on it, but mostly black stuff that might be spray paint.

After seeing how well kept most guns are, it's interesting to find a specimen like that. It seems to be an idiosyncrasy among some bullseye shooters to make their inherently ugly guns even more ugly somehow.

Bottom line is that the guy is a pretty good shot.

[Lloyd Smale]

learned a long time ago in competition. Fear the man with the beat up gun the most. hes put countless round through it getting it to look that way. Usually he will be wearing a pair of jeans and a t shirt and will make all the wanabes dressed in there fake team sponsor shirts and there shinny race guns run and hide by the end of the day. Ive got one buddy up here that shoots our little minor league competitions. hes runs a very small exacuvating bussiness and will even show up at a shoot driving his dump truck and covered with dirt and sweat and i laugh when he shows and tell the rest of them you might as well just toss that first place trophy in the back of his dump truck. He loves some of my nice guns but uses an old cold because its all he can afford. Hell i even provide him bullets for free that he beats me with. he loves shooting my guns but come day of competition you couldnt pry that old colt out of his hand for 5000 dollars. He actually saved up a few years ago and bought a kimber gold match because he liked mine so much. It jammed once in competition and was sold the next week and he went back to the colt. He allways tells eveyone that i own the only two 1911s hed ever buy. My gold match and my gold cup. But id never sell either and tell him hed be the last guy id sell them too. bad enough i get beat with my own bullets but to get beat with your own gun wouldnt cut it.

[Foggy]

While I don't get to shoot it as much as I would like I have a 1911a1 built on an Essex frame with a Remington Rand slide fitted to it. A gunsmith friend fit the slide  I did the internals It shoots very well. I have had people call it a junk parts gun  but after i shoot it the will get o my look. The same Gunsmith that fitted my slide for me  keeps his 1911 in a drawer with his tools it's gouged scratched,  just pretty beat up , but shoots better then many Kimber Caspian and Browns (all wonder full  guns) that I've shot. Given the choice I'll take the 1911 I know over another one