Sendaro wrote on Jan 11^th, 2017 at 7:27am:


I don't know either, except that he had to have been one very accomplished shooter & marksman to enjoy the privilege of hanging out with that crowd.

Wonder if he was one of the many professional men who wrote for the shooting periodicals under a pen-name?  Somewhere I have a list of those names, but don't know where to begin looking for it.

Somewhere I read a reference to property owned in the Shushan area called the "Medicus Woodchuck Preserve".  I think Dr. Baker was the owner.

Think you may find more mention of "Medicus" if you look through issues of the old Rifle magazines (not the current modern magazine publication).

Yes I have read that it was Dr. Skinner that owned the Medicus woodchuck preserve. 

I've looked at the photo and tried to see what the rifle is that Mann is holding. It very well could be the hamburg. Niedner is holding a Stevens 44 1/2.

                         Sendaro

I have to agree. It does look as though it is possible. Mann did have a rifle that Niedner reluctantly made for him blow up. I don't know if it was the Hamburger rifle.

Some of Mann's  Niedner items I understand are at the Walnut Hill Club. I think that the test barrels Niedner made for Mann are there. Not sure what else maybe there as well.

Sure would like to know more about Dr. Baker.

                              Sendaro

frnkeore wrote on Jan 12^th, 2017 at 5:22pm:


 
And these guys were not penny-pinchers!  However, in Smith's Pope book, p. 115, is a photo of a Sidel with a 1" tube; that one, Smith raved about, but a 3/4" Sidel on another Pope, he criticized for several optical faults; Sidel built them in different grades and prices.  Ned Roberts said he thought Sidel was the first to fit objectives larger than tube dia., up to 1-3/4"; "when," he didn't say, but Sidel retired in 1916.  And around 1914, Fred Smith, the Stevens scope guru, mentions in a letter to Pope a special order 1-1/2" / 30X he was building for a private customer. But for chuck hunting in the East, such glasses were probably overkill.

It is also noted Mann shot a Pope Ballard 28 caliber rifle at Medicus W.P and refers to the bullet being front seated if that might help. He also refers to one of the best at Medicus as using a 28 caliber Pope with 12X power scope with specially made fixed ammo and only mentioned as Mr A on a target shot to compare who's 28 shot best. Not allot of details on the 28's, 28/30? or possibly something else. There were some striker actions floating around during that time a couple of Ballards and Hi-Wall floating around anything possibly that looks like a striker conversion? There is no mention of a bolt rifle being used at Medicus that I can quikely find in the book. But then again it is hard to find anything if not going page by page and one word to to the next and I have no intrest in doing so right now but maybe one of you would. There is quite a bit of correspondence with Leopold and Skinner and talk about Baker, Skinner and Pope and something might pop up from it all.

I looked for Henry Baker on Ancestry.com. Used a birthdate of 1860 and a residence of Shushan, NY.  Got something like 9.5 million hits.  I looked at 20 that seemed likely.  Carpenters, bakers, a cook, a guy in the insane asylum, salesmen, a wheelwright, farmers and a lot of farm laborers.  Nothing that would indicate an educated man with enough income to play at the woodchuck game.