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Welcome to the Old Timer Tramper edition. “Tramper?” you ask? Why yes! A person who walks through rough country for fun and recreation. Dave Canterbury, an outdoor skills instructor and author, submitted this one.

He wrote, “This EDC is an early 19th Century example, if only we could hear their stories!” Not sure about the “early 19th Century” part of things as H&R, makers of that .22 pistol, was founded in 1871. But nevertheless, this is certainly an old-timer set-up.

Nevertheless, that pistol might bring home some dinner after a long day of tramping around in the woods.

For a complete description (and links to where you can get some of this for yourself), follow the link to Everyday Carry.

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32 COMMENTS

  1. In my youth I roamed the hills with an H&R 999. A dandy of a kids pistol. That edc dump looks like what a trapper checking his sets would carry.

    I believe it was Canterbury that had a video about using an H&R single shot breech loader as a muzzle loader with a few improvised tools. It was an interesting video to watch.

    On a side note. I killed my share of possums with that H&R. You watching, Possum. 😉

    • “On a side note. I killed my share of possums with that H&R.”

      You trying to give our Possum a paranoia complex, JWM? 😉

    • Canterbury does a lot of trapping. He shoots mostly .22 shorts to finish animals in traps that are still alive. .22s are perfect for that. If he doesn’t have the pistol he uses inserts in the single shot shotgun to shoot .22s in.
      I’ve been following him for years. I don’t trap, and I’m not quite so old fashioned, but I really like the primitive skills. One never knows when they might be needed.

  2. Very cool! Probably got more real practical use out of my various .22 LR handguns than any other I own. Excepting professional duty weapons. They certainly put plenty of small game in the pot when the ol’ ’06 didn’t thunder.

    • The barefoot boy’s name was Cody Lundeen. He’s still around, writing books. Canterbury wasn’t fired, he just didn’t have his contract renewed for the next season after the scandal. The same way Top Gear got rid of Jeremy Clarkson. Not fired, just not rehired.
      And I don’t think he ever lied. If he had lied on a contract they would have had legal cause to fire him without paying off his contract, which they most likely would’ve done if they wanted to have him gone. Which they must have, since they replaced him, but only for the following season.
      The show billed him as a military sniper, which he was not. However, he had attended a private, civilian, long range shooting “sniper’s course”. I don’t have access to the relevant network’s contracts, but my guess is that he just carefully worded the document to list the “sniper’s course” he had attended to leave the impression that it was the military’s course at Quantico, without actually saying so. And the studio bought it hook, line and sinker. Then, when they found out they’d been artfully played, they got really mad, but couldn’t fire him outright without paying off his contract in full.
      So, let him finish out the contract and then blackball him. Just like in Clarkson’s case. But both went on to even bigger things, so yet another fail for hollyweird.

      • Thanks for clearing that up, my memory of it is pretty shot being so long ago. Funny you mention clarkson, I liked him on that show and his sarcastic undertone. I still miss ed from wheeler dealer to, the new guys good but he’s just not ed.

        • “The Grand Tour” on Amazon prime is almost as good as the old Top Gear, and it could even be better, but they’re still finding their way. They have a lot bigger budget now( more trips and bigger challenges), but they still haven’t figured out how to replace Stars in Reasonable Cars. Nor the Stig. They tried an American and a woman, but they both got panned by the Internet. Its still great though. And they deserve credit for responding fast to their fans input, now that they left the BBC for the web.

  3. My first revolver as a teenager was the High Standard Double 9. It was a piece of crap. The cylinder timing was horrible. I kept taking it back to the shop where it was purchased. Finally, they told me “Throw it in the ocean with a quarter, and the fish would throw it back and keep the quarter. Never bought another Hi Standard until they came up with the 22 mag derringer. That was a quality firearm that never gave me a single problem.

    • You must have had a bum double-9.

      I’ve fired someone’s, and there was not a problem with it. No ‘slop’ in it at all. It was his wife’s middle-of-the-night-burglar bedroom pistol.

      You are right about the over-under .22 derringer of High Standard’s. That is a real jewel of a pistol…

  4. That reminds me of the song “Tramp Tramp Tramp” from the movie Naughty Marietta (Victor Herbert) When men were men…and boy could they sing! “….the road is free, blazing roads along the byway…. planters, Canucks, Virginians and Kentucks…” (Sorry, I’m home sick this weekend, going stir crazy. Take your vitamin C.)

    • “Sorry, I’m home sick this weekend…”

      Alcohol kills germs. Mix a stiff gin-n-tonic, and down the hatch. Repeat until you just don’t care any more… 😉

    • Shhhhh. You’re giving up the game. Now let’s go talk about bushcraft and our $300 Gransfors Bruks axe, lol.

  5. Mine was (and I still own) a Harrington & Richardson 649. Killed rattlers with it in my desert and mountain backpack trips,, a few cottontails too. Kept the .22WMR cylinder loaded in a pouch on my pack strap. Mostly cross country and off trail. Later I bought bigger caliber pistols for bigger caliber worries.

    Later as an EMT and wilderness SAR guy I carried a 9mm S&W, but kept it hidden, as there were rules against that. Configured a hideout place in my SAR pack. Wasn’t the only one, knew other rescue folk that did the same both in wilderness work and in street EMT-Paramedics. There was one older SAR guy, Scoutmaster too, who carried a .22 revolver and ignored all rules to the contrary. Nobody would bug him about it, which I always appreciated. Cannot recall all these years later if it was an H&R, an Iver Johnson or a High Standard, but it was one of those.

    Getting back to the H&R 999 and the Sportsman model, I long wanted one. Finally bought an oldie just a few years ago. Fun shooter.

    • It looks period correct. I think they called those ‘match safes’. Fill it with strike anywheres and you had a fire starter for woods running.

      • I have a few newer ones (ABS with O ring seals) with strike anywhere matches in them.

        When I lived in Ohio I couldn’t get strike anywhere matches. I was told they were not sold because of child safety but I dunno if that was ever true or if the various businesses just didn’t carry them. They told me the same thing about rat traps. You also had to show ID to buy most types of glue or tea with ginseng in it.

        Ohio was a fucking weird place.

        • yeah, i asked the counter kids at the pickerington iga where i could get “spirits” (ohio sells diluted booze at the groceries). the looks returned were of incomprehension.
          ohio blue tips, as opposed to the safety striker red tips, made for dangerous pocket incediaries. fill the old aluminum film canisters with cut tips and glue the lids on. early teens walking around like “wages of fear” truckers; one small bump (whip them at the ground) and an impressive shower of sulphur preparations became airborne.

  6. On down days he’d be “trudging”.

    See Paul Bettany as Geoffrey Chaucer in “A Knight’s Tale”.

    ….to walk slowly and with heavy steps, typically because of exhaustion or harsh conditions, nekkid.

  7. I’d better tell Opa to check and see if he’s forgetten his pants somewhere, because that looks almost exactly like what he carries.

    It seems like the moles & woodchucks he was constantly battling never learned that his .32 could touch them in their burrows, and he’d wait with a beer as they slowly raised the ground towards him.

    Then again, now that I think of it, maybe he just enjoyed blowing craters in the dirt (along with the varmints) with his special sauce SWCs, since it’s always full of holes anyhow.

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