The Christmas That Started It All

The Christmas of 1956 still sits clear as day in my mind. I had just turned twelve on December 3rd, and that year when I walked into the living room, there it was under the tree. A brand new Mossberg Model 185. Bolt action. Three shot. Twenty gauge. All mine.

Right next to it sat another gift that would quietly shape the rest of my life. Two books from my aunt by Jack London, Call of the Wild and White Fang. I did not know it then, but those two gifts, one steel and walnut and the other ink and paper, put me on a lifelong road of guns and books.

Mossberg 185

Before that Christmas, my uncles had already been taking me rabbit hunting for a couple of years. I carried my grandfather’s old double-barrel sixteen gauge. It was heavy, kicked like a mule, and I loved it. But this year was different. This year, I had my own shotgun. I do not think a twelve-year-old boy could have been prouder.

A Small Town, a Hardware Store, and a Quarter in My Pocket

I grew up in Desloge, a small Missouri town where everybody knew everybody. Main Street was anchored by Cook’s Hardware. That place sold everything. Nails, paint, feed, guns, and ammo.

More times than I can count, I would walk in with a quarter in my pocket. Mr. Cook would open up a box of twenty gauge shells behind the counter and sell me five shells at a nickel apiece. Over time, he figured out my little Mossberg held three rounds, one in the chamber and two in the magazine. Since I was such a “good” customer, he started giving me six shells for a quarter so I could fully load it twice.

That was small-town credit before credit cards ever existed.

With my pockets full of shells and that little Mossberg on my shoulder, I would head down the railroad tracks, past the trestle over the Big River, and straight into my own Missouri version of the Call of the Wild. In winter, the snow would crunch under my boots and the river banks would be frozen stiff. I would walk those fence lines and timber edges imagining I was right there with Buck and White Fang, moving through cold country where every sound mattered. Rabbits would break from the brush along the tree line, their tracks cutting sharp lines through fresh snow. My breath would hang in the air, my fingers stiff on the stock, and for a few hours I was not a kid from Desloge. I was part of the story. A boy with a shotgun, a pocket full of shells, and the woods wide open in front of him.

A Working Man’s Shotgun by Design

The Mossberg Model 185 came from O.F. Mossberg & Sons during a time when America needed affordable, durable firearms that regular people could actually buy. This was the post-war era. Families hunted for food, boys learned responsibility behind a trigger, and a shotgun did not need to be fancy. It needed to work every single time.

Mossberg 185 Receiver

The 185 is a bolt-action 20 gauge shotgun, which puts it in a category most folks barely recognize today. Bolt-action shotguns filled a gap between single-shot guns and pumps. They offered follow-up shots without the cost or complexity of a repeating action. Fewer moving parts meant fewer failures. When mud, rain, dust, or cold got into everything else, a bolt gun still ran.

It fed from a two-round detachable magazine with one in the chamber, giving you three shots total before reload. That limited capacity was not a disadvantage. It forced discipline. You did not spray shells downrange. You picked your shot, worked the bolt, and stayed in control.

Most 185 barrels ran about 24 inches, which gave solid pattern control without making the gun clumsy in brush. The walnut stocks were plain and unadorned because Mossberg spent money on the steel where it mattered, not on decoration. The safety was straightforward. The bolt travel was smooth but firm. Everything about the gun was built around mechanical honesty.

These shotguns earned their reputation the hard way. They were cheap when new, survived hard use, and kept cycling long after prettier guns had broken parts. They were never collector pieces when they were born. They were tools. And tools that last long enough always become history whether they meant to or not.

Today, these old bolt-action Mossberg's stand as reminders of a time when firearms were built to be affordable, durable, and teach control first. Not fast. Not flashy. Just reliable.

Why Bolt-Action Shotguns Disappeared

By the late 1960s and into the 1970s, bolt-action shotguns began fading fast for one simple reason: pump and semi-automatic designs became cheaper and better. Once manufacturers figured out how to mass-produce reliable repeating actions at working man prices, the bolt shotgun lost its advantage. Hunters wanted faster follow-up shots. Law enforcement and home defense markets shifted hard toward pumps. The bolt gun became the slow middle ground between a single shot and a repeater, and the market walked right past it. Today, they survive as reminders of a transitional era in American firearm design.

Mossberg 185

What a Long Strange Trip It Has Been

Looking back now, it still amazes me how one Christmas morning can echo across an entire lifetime. A shotgun under the tree. Two books on the floor beside it. Steel and stories. Both of them stuck with me.

Every time I think about that kid walking the tracks out toward the river in the snow, I hear the Grateful Dead in the back of my head and have to laugh.

What a long strange trip it has been...

Final Word from Uncle Kenny

That Mossberg and those Jack London books taught me two things at the same time. How to hunt and how to think. How to respect the land and how to understand what lives on it. And if you ask me, a kid could do a whole lot worse than growing up with a good shotgun, a couple of good books, and a path leading down to a river with adventure waiting at the other end.