I remember them very well. The two brothers downstairs feeding the pigs between sorting guns into, Hammer- no good except spares, Hammer-very good, singles, doubles and every calibre and make you could think of and the sisters upstairs making nets, snares or basket traps.Does anybody else remember Youngs of Misterton near Crewkerne? An Aladdin's cave for a young man into wildlife, shooting and trapping. They had every kind of trap, net, snare that you could think of plus loads more. Bought my first rifle from them; a Parker Hale Safari Deluxe 270 Win for £16 (brand new) and a Nikko Sterling platinum scope for £10. I was earning £18 per week so I suppose its still in line with todays
rices, maybe. "Non approved" items were located in the ladies cloakroom! It would be fantastic if there were still some places in existence like them.
Yellow wizard cartridges, Shamrock High Velocity cartridges, that was something new being stamped High Velocity and they even had the Home Guard single ball loose in the window sill.
Do you remember the alarm gun they had fixed up by the door too !! I'm not too sure whether they were loaded with blanks or the real thing !!
I still have one of their paper thin catalogues here somewhere and I also have one of their Ferret boxes with their label still attached.
The box wasn't used very much, I bought it when on leave from Germany along with a couple of ferrets to take back with me.
When I left Germany I sold the Ferrets at the Fish Market in Hamburg for a lot more than I paid for them.
Yes good old days, I don't think the scopes were that expensive when I went there first -back in the fifties !! but then not many people used 'scopes then. I don't think I got a scope until the middle sixties and they weren't very expensive then.
In those days Hill Sawtell and Higdons Ironmongers in Yeovil sold shotguns too.
The 'posh' shop was Jeffries in Silver street Yeovil.
The manager was a chap called Bill Southey and he must have had the patience of Jobe because I spent quite a bit of time in there on market day as I was too young to go in the pub with the men !!