Funny muzzle loader story. I had a 50 Hawkens from made from a kit and given to me by my step dad. I had replace the barrel with a better one with an adjustable sight given to me by one brother, whose stock had developed a crack. I brought it back to Montana on a visit when working in Washington state. I was at one bothers and his buddy was big into the mountain man deal and did fancy tack work. He offered to tack work mine for a few bucks, so I left it with him and finished trip. Then it slipped from my memory when back in WA. Lot was going on, my wife got sick and diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. 6 months later she is gone. 2 months after that I have a house fire in the master bedroom. Have to move everything that survived into storage while they completely rebuilt house. I notice the 50 Hawkins is missing. Small thing at the time. I am tired of it and call about a place wife and I had looked at the previous summer when thinking about moving back. It is still for sale and I buy and start hauling stuff back. Still no Hawkins. Some years later I mention it to the brother who had given me the barrel and he says ya I got it. You left it for Tex to do tack work and when he finished I picked it up. My light comes on. He says "I have it stored in wall behind removable piece of sheet rock in closet". I had already bought a 54 cal replacement and we have done a lot for each other back and forth and as it had his barrel on it, say "well you can have it. I would like to see it sometime though".

He moves and builds a new house a few miles from old place. I was over there a few weeks ago and said "Hey, lets see that Hawkings''. He goes in his bedroom and digs around and then his light comes on. He left it and some other stuff behind the sheetrock in closet wall of old house. LMAO.

He knows woman who bought his old place and she will let him come get the stuff.

The forgotten gun

Not forgotten guns, but missing ones. Former LE passed and friends assisted the widow with inventorying firearms. Several he was known to possess were not found. It was known that he bought a unit that could be used to bury guns and that he had hidden some in the house. Extensive search inside, no missing guns. Metal detector over the entire yard found nothing. Used it inside and also came up empty. Widow has the house listed for sale and is unsure about notifying potential buyers that the house or yard might contain firearms.

When my Uncle Doug died his oldest daughter was handling the cremation and other arrangements. Shortly thereafter she fell ill and passed. Couple years back we were asking the other daughter where her father's ashes were, and she didn't know because her sister had handled it.

Uncle Doug was still sitting in the funeral home back room, 12 years later. *Now* he's in his parents plot, which apparently had been the original plan.

Stuff gets forgotten.

This exactly why I don’t purposely hide thing. My stuff does a perfectly fine job of hiding itself. . I’m glad you were able to recover the hawkin.

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Dave
Regulators mount up!

Mother In Laws boyfriend has Colt 1911 Super 38. We got along well, they lived with us for seven months when their house was rebuilt from Hurricane, I bought him some mags and ammo and took him to the range over the years and he said "I would get it". Long story short, he passes away while Mother in law (bless her heart) is sick and she passes away shortly after from COVID. Of course in cleaning out their rebuilt house, Colt is nowhere to be found. I will always be curious which brother in law pawned it.:-)

When I retired and we bought the place in Texas, wife remained in LA for 9 months to finish her 30. I was going back and forth moving things and getting the new place straightened out. When wife was ready, took everything we wanted out of the house plus guns and ammo. Couldnt take the gunsafe,1100 lbs, plus wanted a better one, so decided to try and sell it with the house. Lived there 20 + years.

We held on to the place for over a year, because neither one of us wanted to go back and deal with it. Had great neighbors so it was being watched. Finally went back to see a good friend who was passing from liver cancer. Fellow shooter and collector, roommate traveling on the same pistol team for 25 years. Don is Japanese so when he passed it was a month before his services due to people coming over etc.

I decided to stay and get the house sold. Got the house cleaned up and up for sale. In speaking to Don's wife she said they needed another safe for Don's guns, that had outgrown the safe years before. Decided to give her the safe, Pearl white with gold trim so it looked nice inside with the other safe. Nice safe company moved it 50 miles and set it up for 150 or so due to situation. When they moved the safe I found a NIB 442 and a treasury set 1 oz,1/2 oz St Gaudens behind the safe ( I had the bad habit of setting stuff on top the safe and forgetting it). Then pushing other stuff in front of it.

KARMA !!! House sold 5 days later. Glad I hadn't left the safe.

An envelope held by an attorney with instructions to only be opened or mailed upon your passing would be a good place to give such information

When my oldest son graduated from HS I gave him a sporterized 1917 Enfield, which had been given to me by my step father, a Remington bolt 22, a Winchester Pump 12 gauge and a model 28. The complete hunter/shooter starter set. He had gone to Alaska commercial fishing with me the 2 previous years. He wanted to stay home that summer. Unfortunately he was killed in a car accident right before I left to go North. To this day my ex claims she has no idea where the guns are.

My great aunt rented her house for a few years. When she moved back in, she decided to give me Uncle Calvin's .22 pump. She had hidden it behind the furnace. Of course, the rifle was gone. We were sure one of the renters found it.

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John 3:16
WAR EAGLE!

The lesson here is to take all of your toys out and play with them.

I do have an H&R .32 topbreak that I put someplace…. I had it out (about three years ago) wife and had to go someplace and didn’t take the time to put it in my safe and put it “someplace safe”…. If only I can remember where that safer place is…

I have a difficult time keeping track of 2" snub nose revolvers, especially since I can't remember how many we bought in the last 2 years. Got to find some 22 LR and 38 Spl ammo and go hunting for "missing' guns.

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S&WHF 366

Found an old Ithaca single shot .22 in a corner behind some fishing rods. Hadn't seen it for about 8 years.

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The best I can with what I got

My grandfathers 2 Winchester .22s - a .22 wrf and a Lr bolt that he grew up with on the farm disappeared while home health car in the house.

*Steel Slayer - condolences on the loss of your son and a shame you couldn’t have recovered the firearms to have another memory of him.

my deceased father in law, died about 5 years ago, bought three Lugers at a gun show he and I went to about 30 years ago, for $1100. I know he sold the '42 BYF to a local pastor some years ago, and when his wife and the rest of us went thru his back closets, we found a Win 94 no body knew he had bought, and one of the Lugers. We can only assume somewhere along the line, in the intervening years, he had also sold a second Luger.

Some years ago, before I got into reloading, I bought a 250 round pack of .45, and soon decided I needed to hide it when several grandson visited. To this day, I have not been able to find that box, not that I need it.

From time to time, and even this past week, the news has some story about a big financial find in some discarded furniture, or the two roofers who found a big stash of $20 gold pieces when renovating a home some years ago.

Oh, unscrupulous people are everywhere. About 25 years ago, a good friend told me his dad knew of a women who found a big box of $20 gold pieces her deceased husband had hidden away. She took them to her small town banker, who told her she could go to jail for having gold coins, but would quietly take them off her hands for face value.

SF VET

From 1934 until 1974 it was illegal to own gold coins or bullion in the US. Jewellery and dental was all that were legal for private citizens.

Moving some guns around I found a 4" 686-5 factory round butt I don't remember buying! Found it wearing a set of smooth factory target/Banana presentation grips.

I had a 686-no dash round butted back in the 1980s, with Pachmayr Compacts it fits my hand perfectly for longer shootings sessions or woods carry..... generally it wears Spegel Boot grips. Also have a 4" 586-5 factory round butt.

Used 686s were dirt cheap in the late 90s around here at two different "Cop Shops"/Gun Shops , boys were born in 97 and 2000.... lucky it made it into the safe and not thrown out with the dirty diapers!

My best friend, Bob, used to go to his Dad's place (about a 3 hour drive) to do some shooting with his 89 y.o. Dad. He quite often left guns there for dad to enjoy for a while.
Bob was battling cancer when his Dad passed. He barely made it to the funeral. He didn't even think about the guns he had at his Dad's house.
After Bob passed and I started inventorying his guns for his wife. In checking his records against what was actually in the safes, I found about 6-7 missing. Including a .44 desert Eagle and a S&W Model 57 .41 Mag.
His sister handled Dad's estate and just assumed all the guns there belonged to Dad. She sold them all and nobody even realized it until after Bob passed.

Former owner of this house left behind one of those funky old single shot 20ga snake-charmer shotgun with an abbreviated butt. I suspect it was her late father's.

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Release the Kraken

Steelslayers, lost gun sounds like a situation I encountered. His was more of a team effort to forget his gun. Mine was a one-person brain cramp. About 2 years after I sold my house, I had lived in for 25 years, I could not find my model 36 S&W. After a few nights wondering where it could be, it dawned on me I had hung it on a nail in my reloading room under the bench, in my old house. Had to take a 6-hour road trip, then knocked on the door of people I only met at the closing and explain I had accidentally left a "person item" at their house. I didn't want to say a gun and freak them out. I let their imagination run amuck and believe it was compromising photographs. It worked and they let me retrieve it.

The whole behind the wall hiding place thing had now been compromised as there exists for contractors, new technology that allows a scanner to be passed over a wall and sees and photographs everything between the walls. Meant to show contractors, waterlines, electrical lines, and stud location. Grandma's jewelry isn't safe there anymore. An interesting story from Colorado Springs police file. A person was tearing down a wall in his house that had been built in the 1880's. Between the walls was a handwritten note confessing to a murder done @1890. After further investigation they discovered and unsolved case of a murder of a man with the same name and date of death as the note had described. They had just solved their oldest cold case.

A guy I know went to the laundromat to wash an oversized comforter and found a S&W 2nd model HE laying in the bottom of the basket
Had been there for a couple weeks , he had stashed it in the basket when he had to run out for a quick errand and had forgotten it .

This was in Canada , kind of a big “oops” lol
Handguns must be locked up except at the range or in your home under your direct supervision ie: cleaning or maintenance

Also, my best friend and roommate who recently passed had a brand new 20 gauge pump
It’s now “ lost” as nobody seems to know where it is
Yes I even checked the scabbard on his quad lol - I think it got left with someone who is a thief at heart
Thankfully I had his old model 70 3006 and the rest of his guns to give to his kids

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the rules? there are no rules

This thread got me remembering thing best forgotten about. Around 1979 I was staying on the second floor of a Days Inn in north phoenix. I was working a 1-week job nearby. My personal car was loaded down with everything the wife could stuff in the trunk for work and play and 2 children. On top of the load, I had 3 cased long guns. While working I used a company pickup. The job was done, and I parked the pickup next to the car and started loading the car truck. Since the guns went in last, I set them in the bed of the truck. Yup, don't need to say what I forgot. Got home in the wee hours of the morning and the long guns were not there. Called my father at 4:AM and went to the motel and they were still there 17 hours later. Anyone walking on the second floor could see them as well as any tall person walking in the parking lot. Since typing this, I remember my wife leaving 3 handguns in a motel in Payson, Az. We had a 4 hour turn around and the motel staff had turned them into the police. Ah brain cramps.

A very good friend is an antique Colt collector and masterful antique Colt (only) gunsmith. His passion is the search for the holy grail of Colt collectors, the Colt Walker 1847! He told me a story of an older friend and benefactor that he often traveled with across the country to fulfil a purchase of a new Colt addition to the friend's collection. The friend had in his collection an authenticated Walker 1847 Colt that he kept in an antique trunk with a secret drawer where he placed the Colt. Alas, the older friend passed and the family was cleaning out his home and burning everything they considered junk. When my friend arrived at the house the old trunk was in the center of the fire. The family did not know that it had the secret compartment. Only two parts of the old Colt were salvaged, the barrel and the cylinder. He showed them to me along with the story.