The Patriot Post® · A 'Browning Man'

If John Moses Browning had anything to do with the design or had his name affixed to it, that was the firearm my father trusted to carry in the field. While he mostly drove Chevys, he also had a couple of Fords along the way. But his hunting arms were all Browning.

So, in the lead-up to Christmas 1969, I, like many other 12-year-old boys in the South, was petitioning heavily for a .22 rifle. I had perused all the catalogs from Sears and Western Auto. I had read all the articles in Sports Afield and had even spent an hour in a bookstore reading the section in Shooter’s Bible about .22 rifles while my mother was getting her hair done. I knew some were simply out of reach, so I settled on any of the cheaper models. I just wanted a .22 rifle.

Imagine my delight on Christmas morning of 1969 when I found a Browning .22 under the tree — the one I didn’t dare ask for.

I remember early on my father shooting a beautiful A.H. Fox Model A shotgun but selling it after a few years, as he felt guilty about carrying such an expensive shotgun in the field. He used everything he owned. So he became a Browning Man. There comes a point when we realize that “good enough” is indeed good enough.

A keen observer would notice that being a Browning Man extended well beyond firearms. He bought my mother Buicks, not Cadillacs. He fished with Fenwick rods, not the expensive customs, although he did outfit all the rods with Swedish Ambassadeur 5000 reels, about the best you could buy at the time. Even a Browning Man has to make an exception now and again.

Prior to one of our Florida fishing excursions, we were tying a mental red ribbon around the trip by shopping at a little A-frame sporting goods store that had just opened. My father called this “gearing up,” and for a father and son it was about as much fun as the trip itself. This little shop was the first that had some truly unique items not to be found elsewhere in the city. I had been badly sunburned on the previous trip and my father told me to pick out a hat with a big brim. He said that would keep my mother happy, and if she was happy, well, all of us would be.

I picked out a floppy cloth affair in camo that looked like what our soldiers in Vietnam were wearing at the time.

The Browning Man would have none of it.

He pointed higher up on the shelf to a fur felt hat with the brim pinned up on one side. He said he had seen Australian soldiers wearing these hats in WW2 during his service and reportedly they were one of the better and longer-lasting ones that could be had. Finding one in my size, my father said: “That’s the one. Might be a little hotter in the summer but it will keep the rain and snow off in the winter as well.”

That year in Florida, I wore that hat everywhere. I’m pretty sure I slept in it as well. It worked exactly as claims suggested and rapidly began to take on a “patina” as well as its own unique odor of fish slime, sweat, Coppertone, and spilled drive-in condiments. I loved it. By the second summer, my mother wouldn’t let me in the house with it.

The hat, of course, was an Akubra Slouch Hat, a style that had been worn by the Australian military since WWI, and it was a trusted piece of gear of mine in the outdoors for years. I still have one. I replace them about every 20 years. I take much better care of them these days. People let me indoors with them now and dogs no longer want to roll on my hat.

I lost my father to a heart attack when I was 19 years old, so I hold on tightly to these memories and artifacts that remind me of him. I think that is why I have an affinity for good hats to this day — in a small way, they connect me back to that day in that little A-frame shop when the Browning Man and I were “gearing up.”

The Christmas gift Browning .22 was stolen in 1980. It was a heavy loss. Someday, I will replace it to help me remember the Browning Man.