MALCOLM MACGREGOR

Malcolm G. MacGregor

I started shooting with my dad at about age 5. My Daisy Red Ryder BB gun was shot untold thousands of times around our property in New Hampshire where my nearest playmate was 3 miles away. I remember trying to light “Ohio Blue Tip” wooden matches stuck in a log, with a blanket as back stop to retrieve the BBs. Once I graduated to a Model 25 Daisy pump action, I spent hours during the summer walking the fields shooting grasshoppers on the wing.

Living in a small town during the 50’s and 60’s was wonderful. I grew up hunting, fishing and camping with my dad and the Boy Scouts. I always had a talent for building and fixing things and collected everything from coins to bird skulls. Every other Saturday morning (after daily chores) I rode my very used bike to town; picking up returnable bottles along the way. After a stop at the store to return the bottles and buy a 5 cent candy bar, I attended the auction held at the Grange Hall. Mixed boxes of cool old stuff like: broken clocks, motors (and some gun parts) could be had for 5-10 cents. All it took was a few empty bottles!

Through my early adulthood, after spending time in the Army, and despite having a degree in Geology from UNH; my love of shooting and guns resulted in my working as a gunsmith at Riley’s Sport Shop in Hooksett, NH. I left after a year and started as a self-employed gunsmith, specializing in stock work and restoration of fine double shotguns. I bought my first Purdey, a bar-in-wood hammer gun, when I was 21. Finding it tough to make much of a living as a gunsmith, I bought and sold guns and rifles as a supplement to my income and attended most of the major gun shows in the Northeast throughout the 70’s and 80’s.

When a car drove into the bedroom of my house in Durham, NH I quickly learned how to restore old houses as the insurance company didn’t want to pay much. I taught myself masonry, timber framing and joinery. Finding this type of work much more lucrative than gun work I started Piscataqua Architectural Woodwork Co. specializing in raised paneling, doors, windows, and moldings which I made mostly by hand using 18th century tools. I was featured in many magazines such as “Yankee”, “The Wood Craft Supply” catalog, and “Fine Woodworking” where I was on the cover. By the 1990’s, when the demand for my work cratered with the building recession, my wife Terri and I moved to land we had in the Bahamas and rented out our boathouse cottage for a living during the winters.

Throughout all this time I continued hunting and fishing locally and, in later years, worldwide from Argentina to Zimbabwe. I also amassed a large collection of guns and rifles.

I started cataloging high quality firearms for James D. Julia in 2008 and now continue working for Poulin Auctions. Although I’m 77, I still learn something new every day! Jim Julia would introduce me to others as “The man who has described more fine shotguns than anyone else in the world!”

Although I am a fair wing shot, my love has always been for rifles. I have been blessed with the ability to shoot very well and have won many competitions mostly at The Vintage Cup. I continue to shoot shotgun at side-by-side venues like the Spring Southern Side-By-Side and its Parker vs. L. C. Smith Challenge Cup, I do ok there too!

Always having admired the innovation and supreme quality of Purdey guns and rifles I continued to acquire the best examples of their work (both antique and modern) that I could find and spared no expense to buy them.  It intrigued me that although Purdey’s were instrumental in rifle development, they focused on shotguns and only made about 450 hammerless double rifles between 1880 and 2012 (4 a year). Because of this small output, their rifles are always special, with extreme attention paid to detail. They were always done by their best workmen and approach perfection. Many Purdey rifles were made in proprietary calibers. Of those, quite a few were altered to standard available cartridges over the years. Because of this, I did my best to find Purdey rifles that had not seen later alterations and were in their original calibers.

So here they are… I hope your derive as much enjoyment from them as I have!

Cheers! Mal MacGregor