In those days, you could only ship firearms by Railway Express, as there was no UPS, FedX or anything like that. I sent the rifle to P.O. Ackley in Utah with instruction to rebore it to 45-70, cut off the butt flat and install a recoil pad while filling in the little wood divot on top left over from the crescent butt plate. In the fullness of time, a train pulled back in and I received a post card from the Railway Express office that a package was there for me.
Ackley had done as requested and a good job at that. I now had a 1886 in 45-70 with a flat butt and a 19" barrel. I added a Redfield Sourdough front sight and a Lyman 66 rear receiver sight. I cast up a bunch of the old Gould 330 grain hollow points and loaded them as recommened by Keith in his articles on the subject. The rifle was sighted in and the best I could get was 3" at 100 yard groups. I figured that was good enough and used that rifle to hunt Texas Hill Country Whitetail for about three or four years. When I was sitting on a stand I would use a flat shooting scoped rifle, but when I took to the hills on foot, I would grab the old Winchester. I managed to put four or five deer down with that rifle and it did a great job.
That dear friends is how the Guide Gun came into being. I thought you might like the real story. Marlin never has given me proper credit.
. I told the guy at the gunshow I owned one of their custom guns and was not happy with it. This fellow told me they had never built such a gun. I informed him he was not around when the work was done and ask him who he was. He introduced himself as Vern Ewer and said he was a new partner in the enterprise. Once I convinced him of the validity of my story he took a look at the gun and checked it out. He said he would make it right even if he hadn't been there before. I found him to be honest,a good gunsmith, and a great guy. He ordered a 44 mag cylinder and fitted it to the gun and kept the old one for custom 45's. The gun was a constant companion for many years and was exceptionally accurate. It had a bead blast finish and some sort of teflon finish and looked similar to later stainless guns but had a pinned barrel and recessed cylinder. Later I had Vern build me a 44 special from a model 28 using the other 4" barrel from J&G. So, I foolishly sold the gun at the Washington Gun Collectors show in "Pew-El-Up" while out of work. A short time afterward I saw basically the same gun marketed by Smith & Wesson as the "Mountain Gun".