Chatting with a friend about the Factory Reps back in the days of my youth
He brought up how the Bausch & Lomb reps had a shtick wherein they would set a scope on the corner of a display cabinet then turn and knock it to the floor and pick it up and go on talking. He would then mount it in a fixture shaped like a rifle stock that could be affixed with an optical collimator and proceed to invite anyone to look see if it wasn’t still perfectly centered in the bullseye.
I reminded him of the ads they had of their scopes being used to hammer a nail into a piece of wood then mounted on a rifle and working fine. He was a gunsmith at a large shop back then and he said he witnessed the act of driving a ten penny nail with a scope that the rep later shot a match with and did quite well.
Those were good times. John Bartlett was the Winchester Rep and Larry French was repping other lines and not only were both outstanding shots, they traveled to gun shops and gun clubs, large and small, and if you mentioned an issue you were having with their product it was not surprising for them to tear the gun down and either set it right or at least accurately diagnose the issue and tell you who to take it to or to send it back to the factory with the note they gave you. I remember many of those guys face, but can’t remember their names on demand. The names do come to me from time to time though.
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