Len’s Remington Model 11

In those days, when three dollars was considered a fair day's pay, he made good money selling canvasbacks, pintails and bluebills to the restaurants in Redwood City.

The Model 11 weighed 2 pounds more than what I was used to. It was awkward to load and had a dangerous safety on the inside of the trigger guard.

During a lull between flights, I swung through a high-passing spoonbill. “No way,” Rob Robinson said, then lapsed into silence as the bird folded and dropped in a fall that seemed to last forever.

More important than rhyme scheme or secondary themes, is that 60 years ago, a morning hunt inspired him to write.

In late October a full moon shimmered above the Snake River Canyon and five greenheads lay on the pickup's tailgate when I slipped the Model 11 into its case.

Len Dalve had less than a month to live when I first met him. He and Rob Seely, my father-in-law, had been friends for 60 years by then and when Len realized he was dying, he started to put his house in order. That's how I ended up with his diary, and later, his shotgun.

Sixty-five years had passed since Len market hunted the lower reaches of San Francisco Bay. Like the century, Len was in his late teens. In those days, when three dollars was considered a fair day's pay, he made good money selling canvasbacks, pintails and bluebills to the restaurants in Redwood City. The going rates were four bits for a can and two bits for a sprig or bluebill. He built his own single-oar scull, loaded his own shells and trained his own dog.

But more than that, Len was a superb wing shot. Dropping his late friend's worm eaten accountant's ledger on his kitchen table, Rob showed me why Len was a legend. One page in that worn diary records that in 1917, the final season of legal market hunting, he killed over 500 birds.

The diary also includes a poem. Written in Len's precise hand the opening describes a night in a wood shack spent playing cards, singing and listening to the wind push the tide against the pilings. It also describes a gray dawn and the first canvasbacks winging low over the storm-tossed South Bay.

Until I read the entire poem, I had no idea why Len left his decoys to my infant son, Andrew III. These were not working blocks, but highly detailed heirlooms to be passed from father to son. Len's unmarried stepson had no interest in hunting and I see now that Len guessed any duck hunter who named his son the third, would also pass along a love of the sport.

I only spoke with Len once. By then his hearing was nearly gone and he had trouble rising out of the recliner in his darkened living room, but his mind was still sharp.

“How's the Third?” was the first thing he asked.

“Doing real well. When he's older he'll appreciate those decoys,” I raised my voice to make myself heard.

“Good.” Len settled back into his worn chair. For the better part of an hour in a voice grown raspy with age, he spoke of a dawn hunt. On that gray winter morning more than sixty years later, he could remember the date, the names of the men and dogs, how many dozen decoys they set and the numbers and types of ducks they killed. For Len the past was more brilliant than the present and he grew animated in its embrace. The effort, however, exhausted him and when Rob nodded sideways toward the door, I shook his hand a final time and crossed to the front entry.

It was then that Rob pointed out Len's ancient Remington Model 11 autoloader leaning in the corner. Decades of exposure to salt air had painted a patina of rust over the original bluing. The stock was scarred and loose, the forearm checkering was worn and the rubber recoil pad was brittle with age.  Len’s Model 11 needed a thorough cleaning and a gunsmith's critical eye.  Even then I would have had second thoughts about shooting it.

Designed by John Browning, the brilliant American gun designer the Model 11 was originally manufactured on a royalty basis by Fabrique Nationale D'Arm es de Guerre of Belgium. The first production semi­automatic, it was introduced in 1903 and became famous as the square-backed Belgian Browning. Because of tariff restrictions Browning was unable to import the gun at a profit and, in 1905, offered the rights to Remington, which produced the shotgun in various grades for the next 43 years. With a five-shot magazine and legendary reliability, the Model 11 quickly became a duck-hunting standard. But like the man himself, Len’s Model 11 was worn out. Too many years and too many rounds had taken their toll and I gratuitously mumbled something about “nice gun,” and promptly forgot about it.

Three weeks later Rob called to say Len had died. “Would you want his shotgun?” he asked.  My first ungracious thought was that it would just be another antique cluttering up a closet.  I believed it was too old to shoot and didn’t truly even count as an antique–– nothing I could reasonably hang on a wall. Before I could answer Rob continued, “You wouldn’t have to hunt it. You might just save it for the little guy.”

I knew then, that Len wanted the Third to have it. Rob brought it to me that summer, carefully wrapped in an old blanket. I cleaned it, replaced the recoil pad then stored it in a bedroom closet until the opening of dove season in Idaho­­. I don't know why I picked the Model 11 over my fast-swinging Browning 20 gauge. Curiosity, I suppose, the unanswered question if it would fire without falling apart. When Duffy Witmer, my hunting partner, first saw it that morning, he laughed and called it a blunderbuss. I laughed with him. The Model 11 weighed 2 pounds more than my Browning over and under, was awkward to load and had a dangerous safety on the inside of the trigger guard. Half an hour later, without having fired a shot, I figured I'd made a mistake hauling it along.

The first two doves of the season came on a fast crossing pattern. Headed for the sunflower field behind me, they spiraled in 30 yards out, one flaring high and to the left, the other to the right. I instinctively brought the Model 11 up and an instant later both birds tumbled out of the air. A double on crossing doves! I'd never shot that well in my life! Duffy tried to ignore it. My Labrador, Till, studied me with new respect. And I looked at the gun.

What followed was almost eerie. In the early season, I went nine for twelve on doves and five for seven on blue grouse. On a bluebird opener for ducks, I went seven for nine while my hunting partner (who will remain nameless but is a hell of a shot) hit one for five. I consistently made shots I missed in past seasons. I bought the Model 11 a case and cleaned it after each hunt. Still, it was old, ejected erratically and jammed regularly.

I took it on an Alberta goose hunt, and during a lull between flights, swung through a high-passing spoonbill.

“No way,” Rob Robinson said, then lapsed into silence as the bird folded and dropped in a fall that seemed to last forever.

Witmer and Robinson say the gun simply fits me. But that's not true. By any standard the stock is too short. It goes beyond fit. Like an abandoned hunting shack or an arthritic Labrador, an aura of tradition clings to the gun. In the past year I've realized that Len's gun was blooded by a shot far better than I and now—after so many tens of thou­sands of rounds––knows no otherway.

Len Dalve was not a poet. He was a duck hunter who never wrote more than the poem that I found in his diary. Besides Len himself, I suspect only Rob Seely and I have ever read it. Like its author, it is simple and rough. But what is more important than rhyme scheme or secondary themes, is that sixty years ago, a morning hunt inspired him to write:                                            

  The race is on the point our goal, The night is quickly crossed.

Your ears are cold your hands bitten By that old dog frost.

But we don't care, get out the deacs, The flight will soon be here.

We get them out and get all set 

Just as the dawn breaks clear

Get down, stay down

There leading to your right! There swinging in, there coming low!

Now, keep down, out of sight.

All right, lets go we cry

And raise our guns with glee! We pop 'em twice and let 'em go

To find we've knocked down three.

In late October a full moon shimmered above the Snake River Canyon and five greenheads lay on the pickup's tailgate when I slipped the Model 11 into its case. It was half an hour past shooting time and I watered the dogs. While they drank, I remembered how the mallards had flared over the decoys. At that moment, if Len had left the scarred Model 11 to me, I would not have traded it for a matched set of over and unders.

A late flight of mallards funneled in above the cornfield and I wondered if Len's Model 11 would fit the Third, or if 30 years from now he would value the decoys and diary. Another flight arrived and then another. In minutes the night air was vibrating with the sound of flaring wings. More flights arrived and I marveled at the beauty of ducks circling past the rising moon. And, as the birds fluttered into the silvery stubble, I sensed that Len had once been equally moved by a morning on San Francisco Bay and that more than a shotgun and decoys, it was the emotions behind the poems that he hoped the Third would inherit.