"Sold! Well done, young man." And just like that, two of the greatest things ever to happen to my teenage self occurred in one moment. I became the proud owner of a 10-bore shotgun with 50 cartridges, and John Humphreys, Shooting Times' Country Gun, spoke to me.
It was Little Oakley and District Wild fowlers' sporting auction. We were raising funds for our first land purchase and Humphreys was our celebrity auctioneer. I loved reading his stories of adventures in Hunter's Fen. Part of the reason I'd bought the gun was a chance to speak with him.
He offered kindly, gruff advice for free, just as he did in the pages of ST. A summer of sweat-sodden corn-carting had paid off, and with my hard-earned savings spent, a season with a proper fowling piece beckoned.
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