HUNTING FOR A GOOD GUNSMITH?
By: Mary K. Boyle

You wouldn’t go rock climbing with a frayed rope.  You wouldn’t leave your best tools laying out in the weather to rust.  So why aren’t you keeping your gun cleaned and tuned?  Depending on what you do with it, a gun can be a tool (for you dedicated hunters) or sporting equipment (skeet shooting, anyone?).  It might be the shotgun your grandfather passed to your father, who in turn gave it to you when you were “old enough,” or it might be that special firearm you researched and hand-picked yourself; either way, your gun is a valuable and essential piece of equipment.  And, it’s essential that your gun fires properly so you do not injure yourself or others.  With that in mind, I went to visit with Randy Arndt, a gunsmith with a reputation for being able to fix  just about any problem you could run across or create for yourself. 

It doesn’t take very long for me to realize that I’m in the company of a master of the trade, and I’m surprised but not shocked to learn that Randy worked for Beretta USA¬ for twelve years.  “They called me up and asked me to run the shop over there,” Randy tells me calmly.  You see, Randy had run his own place for eighteen years by that time, and he’d earned himself quite a reputation.  As a member of the National Guard in Pennsylvania and later Wyoming, he had brought home a slew of marksmanship awards, which line the wall of his shop.  In traveling to competitions and participating in gun shows and the like, gun owners began recognizing him as a talented craftsman.  His time with Beretta only served to bolster his reputation.  “Word is in the field,” says Randy’s wife and inspiration Pat, “that if there’s anything wrong with a Beretta, he’s the guy to fix it. If he can’t fix it, it can’t be fixed.” 

One of the reasons Randy is so good at what he does is because he loves guns.  “My dad couldn’t hide a gun in the house,” he remembers, “because I’d find it and take it apart.”  Randy took his first gun apart when he was five, and hasn’t looked back.  I watch him with a customer and I can tell from the way he handles the gun with gentle respect that this is a man who admires guns the way a car enthusiast loves a well-built engine; it isn’t just the power, it’s the workings of a finely-tuned machine that brings a smile to Randy’s face.

Randy left Beretta when he started feeling an itch to head out West.  “It was time to do what I wanted to do.” That is, run his own shop again, and have some fun hunting and fishing. When he announced the move to his family, they were quite excited.  Not knowing exactly where he wanted to land, Randy pulled out an atlas and looked it over with the wife and kids.  When he saw Wyoming, he just knew he had to move here.  “There were only 490,000 people in Wyoming, the least in the nation╔and I said, ‘That’s it.’”  To pick up and move a family away from a good job may seem like a crazy thing to do, but Randy has a very philosophical view about the whole thing.  “I came into this world with nothing,” he tells me, “and if I lose it along the way, I can build it up again and go from there.” 

So build back up he did. He came to Wyoming for the way of life it offered him, and ended up a lot better off than you might think.  You see, that reputation Randy had been quietly working on for thirty years followed him here. People who own guns are called gun-lovers for a reason, and you don’t let a silly thing like hundreds of miles stand in the way of keeping a beloved firearm in good working condition.  Randy still has guns sent to him from Washington, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and all over the US.  Randy has been a gunsmith for thirty-five years now, and he still gladly works on pistols, rifles, and shotguns.  He strips, cleans, and fixes any gun that comes across his work bench.  Randy has also mastered the rare skill of  machining.  He likes working with the metal.  He used to do a lot of wood working, but he found it too time-consuming and tedious.

Like all reputable gunsmiths, Randy is busy year-round, servicing guns for hunters, collectors, and marksmen.  He also does appraisals for insurance purposes--mostly after the gun in question has been destroyed or damaged by fire; he can clean and fix a gun that’s been through a fire, as well.  Unlike the four to six month wait you might have in some of the big cities, Randy can have your gun back to you anytime from one day to several weeks, depending on what you want done.  Randy tells me that keeping with a local gunsmith is the best value for your time and money.  If, for instance, you have a repair that would cost forty dollars to complete, and it takes another forty dollars to send the gun back to the factory, taking six weeks instead of six days╔getting the point?

Randy tells me that finding a reputable gunsmith will only get harder in the future.  Gunsmithing is a dying art, with more smiths becoming specialized, instead of having a broader knowledge of gun repair and machining.  Few people have the business savvy to make a go of it.  The good news is that the gunsmiths left will be the ones who are smart enough and skilled enough to have built a reputation and a clientele.  You have to be good to do this job.

If there was one piece of advice Randy could offer gun-lovers across Wyoming, it would be “take your guns to a qualified gunsmith.  Get it done right the first time.”  Oh, and don’t forget:  With our famous Wyoming wind, “dust collects in the interior parts and the trigger mechanism and becomes a safety hazard.”  Don’t forget to get that gun professionally cleaned before heading out for the hunt this year.

I leave Randy and Pat with a great respect for gunsmiths and guns in general, vowing to make my husband take his shotgun in for a good cleaning, and thinking maybe I’d take my little .22 out for some target shooting.  It’s like Randy says, it doesn’t matter if you’re out hunting the big game, or shooting skeet, or just shooting holes in paper, it’s all about loving what you do with your gun.

One of the great things about hunting is that it is a family sport that lasts a lifetime.  Youngsters can ride along until they’re old enough to take a Hunter’s Safety class and pack their own rifle.  Decades later, there is no reason to retire from it, either, with a little health and help.  There will always be plenty of new vistas to survey, new stories to swap, new hunts.  Just ask Joyce Barrows, who--at the age of sixty-five--has been hunting as long as she can remember, yet will be hunting elk herself for the first time this year!

Joyce was born into a family of hunters, and got an early start at Grandmother Mildred Wilson’s ranch out of Wheatland, toward Sheep Mountain. The oldest of nine children, Joyce remembers an early photograph taken when she was just learning to walk, proudly joining her dad and uncle next to a trophy deer they had just bagged.  Later, she spent time hunting deer and birds in Nebraska, eventually retuning to Wyoming.  For a few seasons in those early years, this spirited lady cooked and kept camp for her dad’s outfitting business in the Silver Creek country near Boulder, Wyoming.  Joyce met her husband, Rooney, and finally settled in Riverton in 1964.  In November, they will celebrate forty-one years of marriage. 

The Barrows plan their vacations around their favorite outdoor sports, with a week in the summer set aside for camping and fishing, and  another trip for hunting every year.  Even health problems (including cancer treatment a few years back) haven’t stopped Joyce from getting out in the backcountry.  Even when she was hospitalized in Salt Lake City, she still enjoyed the outdoors by watching hunting on television! 

While back at her job as an office assistant at Fremont Family Practice during the off-season, Joyce still has her hunting trips on her mind.  The Barrows have a unique way of funding their fishing and hunting trips, and that is by saving change throughout the year!

Joyce doesn’t remember a lot of outstanding trophies through the years, but still has plenty of great stories, some really nice specimens, and always meat on the table.  There was a big Mulie with a twenty-two inch spread and the longest tines she’d ever seen.  And a 1981 buck, perhaps not a trophy rack, but the biggest-bodied deer to come out of the Lost Cabin area in a decade.  In fact, you can still see its photo in the Lysite Store!  2003 is remembered for “Old Ugly,” an odd buck with a perfect Whitetail rack on one side, and a deformed Mulie-type on the other.  Joyce remembers one trip she made with her three young children, coming across a bunch of bucks moving up a draw above them toward a tree-covered ridge.  Knowing the country well, Joyce skirted a hill to cut them off, just as a blizzard blew in.  With the blizzard rapidly increasing in ferocity, she was about ready to give up when she heard, then saw, two deer through the snow.  They were standing ten feet overhead on a ridge.  With no time to waste, she pulled up and shot from the hip, bringing down a buck that she swiftly dispatched with a second shot.  Joyce recalls that she felt a bit bad, as the buck was much bigger than the one her young son had taken; his first.  But she would earn it, no doubt, as she headed back to town.  Rooney and their son went on to take care of his deer, while mom and two little girls headed home in a hard rain, rushing to get her deer hung and protected from the weather, which she finally accomplished with the help of a neighbor.

Joyce has almost always brought home a deer, and always goes to elk camp, usually helping out as a spotter, cook, or general helper.  This year, she’ll join her husband, son, and daughter in all drawing an elk tag, and is looking forward to putting her Winchester 308 (a gift from Rooney) to work in bringing home her first bull.

Joyce points out that her years of success and enjoyment in the field can be attributed to taking time to slow down and enjoy the moment.  She say hunters can add a lot of pleasure to the trip by taking it easy, not driving so fast, enjoying the beautiful Wyoming vistas and seeing--really seeing--the country and the wildlife.  Clearly, this veteran hunter has the right idea, gathering memories from the people, the critters, and the country she meets.  Even without success in the hunt, camping in the backcountry is a memory unto itself.  And by now, Joyce may have an all-new elk story to add to those memories. You’re never too old for another first.