And this one was once a varmint rifle

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Note, however, that the Walker-Hepburn No. W4 John references in his last post is only assumed to have been rifled by Schoyen and thus owned and shot by Hudson because, to quote the auction catalog, "... the barrel ... shows his [Schoyen's] nine groove uniform right hand twist rifling".

HOWEVER, the rifle just sold by RIA which Joe opened this discussion about has a barrel that's actually stamped with Schoyen's standard barrel stamp AND has Schoyen's characteristic chocolate brown finish.  Thus in my opinion it has a greater potential of being the Hudson-owned Walker that Dutcher mentions.

Finally, Warren Greatbatch's collection was sold in 2014 by Amoskeag Auctions, split between Auction 100 and Auction 104.  The Schoyen-stamped Walkere-Hepburn did not appear in either catalog.  Of course, it could have been sold in another auction or privately.  Unfortunately, I can't find any reference other than the 12/2021 RIA catalog that ties the Walker-Hepburn-Schoyen rifle to Greatbatch.

Bill Lawrence

rkba2nd wrote on Dec 8^th, 2021 at 7:43pm:


It wasn't. I called and talked to South Bay prior to this auction, and asked the same question. A nice young lady put me on hold, and when she returned she told me their firearms expert said no NICS check would be required, and it was a mistake to post that on their auction. But that was two weeks before the auction, and they never corrected their info on the site.