Review: Browning Maxus Wicked Wing

By G&A Online Editors

Several years ago, I traveled up to Wyanet, Illinois, for a big ­gun auction. This was not a high-­class affair as might be presented by James D. Julia or Rock Island Auction, but rather a local sale that featured hundreds of economical to medium-­grade firearms.

I have forgotten what I went to for, but what I did see were endless tables of modestly priced hunting shotguns. There were Remington Model 11s and Winchester Model 50s by the dozen, but what struck my imagination was the panoply of private-­branded scatterguns — J.C. Higgins, Revelation, Foremost, Ted Williams, and Western Field, for example.

These were relics of a time when retailers that are on shaky ground but still with us, like J.C. Penney and Sears, competed with long-­gone names like Coast to Coast, Gamble’s, Montgomery Ward and Western Auto. These were generic guns, produced in the millions by makers everyone knows, like Savage and Winchester, or others remembered only by those eligible for social security, like High Standard or Noble.