Note: “One-Gun Pete” is a chapter in Jim Carmichel’s highly anticipated new book, Classic Carmichel: Stories From The Field. The book features a collection of articles from Jim’s 38 years as Shooting Editor of Outdoor Life, each highlighting his international hunting and shooting experience. Enjoy!

There were a number of pretty good reasons that I never particularly cared for going to school, but the most vexing of all was because of the gaggles of unthinking school administrators who invariably scheduled terms so they interfered with hunting seasons.

Which caused me, on more than a few days when attending classes didn’t seem a sensible thing to do, to seek the company of a local ne’er-do-well whose sole purpose in life, so far as I could discover, was hunting and fishing. In addition to this virtue, he had the good grace to let me hide my hunting clothes in a rickety tool shed behind his rickety house. He could roll a cigarette or tie on a fly with one hand and wore high-top work shoes in the summer and fall (not that he recognized either of these seasons as a fit time to be working). The rest of the year he went around with patched boots flopping about his knees. I never saw him without a faded red leather cap with fuzzy earflaps that he would flop down when the windchill hit minus 20F.

His name was Pete and he had a sour-tempered wife who had a regular job in town. What I probably remember best about Pete was the long-barreled 12-gauge Model 12 Winchester pump that for six months of the year was an extension of his person and personality.

A Model 12 Winchester like Pete’s.

Whoever said, “beware the man with one gun,” must have had Pete in mind, because he was probably the most consistent deadly wingshot I’ve ever hunted with. Doves, quail, rabbits, or ducks, he hunted them all with the full choked M-12, but he was particularly awesome when shooting from the hardscrabble duck blinds we’d make from cedar brush and driftwood.

That was before steel shot, of course, when high brass 4s were Pete’s choice and 50 yards overhead was “about right.” But I saw him take ’em a lot higher and kill them so dead they tumbled in a long trajectory from where they’d been hit.

He’d shuck a sweet-smelling paper case out of the old shotgun, give me a wink, and say, “Boy, run get that there duck.”

I ran and got lots of ducks for Pete, and every time I see a Model 12 that has been worn to glassy slickness, I think of ducks falling out of winter skies.

Those days were classic, and so were Pete and his Model 12.

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