Author: Grumpy

Storytelling has been around since mankind. It was the original entertainment until fire was discovered. Combining the warmth and glow of fire accentuated storytelling. What could be better? When man learned about fermenting berry juice, things got really cozy. Sitting around the fire, sipping a beverage and hearing stories is still a popular tradition.

No matter how many times a story is told, new details emerge, new listeners hear it for the first time, and older listeners remember the past. Whatever stage of life you’re in, gather around and hear the tale of S.S #1.

Raton, New Mexico Territory

The story starts one day this past June. While in the outskirts of Raton, NM, at the NRA Whittington Center, I was enjoying myself with a special group of people originally brought together by John Taffin.

One day, Bobby Tyler approaches me, turning sideways to show me his holster, a Barranti Leather “Hipshot” shuck with the Bar-T stamp carved on it. “Notice anything special?” he asks. I mention the Bar-T stamp, and he says, “No, about the gun?” The gun was an old 3-screw Ruger with Ram stocks. Being holstered, it was all I could tell. Bobby draws the gun, checks it, then hands it to me.

Who’da Thunk?

It’s a .44 Special conversion, nicely done, but then I noticed something that set me to trembling. Rolling the gun over, I see the serial number on the bottom of the cylinder frame. It’s S.S. 1! Holy cow! Bobby has Skeeter Skelton’s famous #1 gun. I’d read everything about this gun, heard stories about it from Skeeter’s son Bart, but never laid eyes on it, not even pictures of it, and now I am holding it in my hands, dumbfounded.

All I could say was, “How?” Bobby explained he got the gun from Bob Baer’s estate. Bob got it from John Wooters some time ago.

The story starts with Skeeter being in the hospital before he died. Wooters would visit his buddy, showing support and comfort. He came up with the idea of having one last custom conversion built in hopes of cheering his old amigo up.

He got others involved, but Skeeter died before the gun was completed. Wooters decided to have the gun finished anyway. Along the way, other friends wanted a “special” Skeeter gun in honor of the man responsible for Ruger .44 Special conversions.

The Start

John Taffin wrote about this event in GUNS magazine, and through his article and John Wooters’ own words, we repeat the cycle. By retelling the amazing, heartwarming story, so others may learn, while some will be reminded of the events.

John starts, “Skeeter passed from us in 1988. Shortly thereafter, in 1989, I did an article on Ruger conversions for our sister publication, American Handgunner. Soon after, I received a letter from our mutual friend, John Wootters, and he related the tale of Skeeter’s last sixgun.”

“Your recent Sixgunner piece about the ‘little Rugers’ inspires me to tell you a tale. The so-called ‘little Ruger’ in .44 Special was the favorite type of sporting pistol cartridge of my late buddy, Skeeter Skelton, who spent much of his terminal illness in a hospital here in Houston.

Together with another friend and single-action expert, Bob Baer, we passed a lot of time plotting the creation of just such a pistol, of which he’d done several only to sell or trade them all away. We even acquired the 3-screw, .357 Mag Blackhawk for raw material. Sadly, Skeeter had to fold his hand before the last race, and the project never went further until recently.

The Details

“The gun was re-chambered and re-barreled (4-5/8″, from a slow-twist, proven-accurate .44 Douglas premium blank) by Houston pistolsmith Earl Long. Bill Grover (Texas Longhorn Arms) then took over. He recut the forcing cone to suit himself, put a Colt-style crown on the muzzle, and installed one of the front sights he makes for his Grover’s Improved No. 5 Keith gun.

He also re-chambered the cylinder and adjusted the cylinder gap to less than .002″ (which makes it the tightest Ruger, even customized, I’ve ever seen!), and then hand-fit one of his No. 5 basepins. Finally, he broke the leading edge of the cylinder all around to make it easy on holsters.

“Bob Baer took over from there. He installed a bolt-block and hand-tuned the action… and he is as good at that as any living man. He also performed his trigger magic, producing an exquisite 2-pound let off. Then he flat filed the frame, removing all markings, and rounded off the square corners of the topstrap, sort of ala Colt SAA.

“Many years ago, Skeeter and I shared a hunting trip in northern British Columbia, during which we jointly discovered the skeleton of a mature Stone ram, probably killed in an avalanche.

We slipped the horns, and Skeeter took one and I the other. Later, I traded Chubby Hueske, the custom knife maker of Bellaire, Texas, some of the horn material for his work and skill in flattening and rough-shaping a pair of single-action grip blanks from it. I’ve been saving them for the right gun for 15 years.

“This is the right gun. Baer fitted and shaped the grips to my order, leaving the aluminum XR3-RED grip frame bright-polished, which was the way Skeeter liked them. That sheep horn is spectacular, a beautiful, creamy, smoky gray with subtle striping. Bob says it’s harder than ivory!

Now the gun went back to Grover for marking and polishing. The only markings are ‘.44 SPECIAL’ on top of the barrel, ‘T.L.A., INC. RICHMOND TEXAS’ in two lines on the topstrap, a tiny, stylized longhorn steer head on the right side of the frame (Grover’s logo), and the serial number ‘S.S. 1’ (for Skeeter Skelton), on the underside of the frame. Finally, Grover’s man, Lee, did an inspired job of polishing and bluing.

“The little .44 is a sweetheart, quiet and pleasant to shoot, accurate (naturally, in that chambering), light as a feather, and pretty as a yellow cactus Blossom. It leaps to the hand of its own will and seeks a target with the eagerness of a pointer pup. I will cherish it ’til the day I die, and I may even have it buried with me!

“I think you’d like what I’ve come to call ‘Skeeter’s Gun’. I know Skeeter would have loved it… It’s his kind of sixgun… and mine. It’s also a sort of tribute to an old and dear friend. He comes to mind every time I buckle it on, which is daily when I’m at my ranch on the border. He’d have liked this memorial better than any other kind, I expect. Baer told Sally and young Bart about it, and they agreed; they’re touched.”

This could have been the end of the story; however, Bill Grover, who is now also gone home, had a great idea. This was the first Skeeter Skelton Sixgun, and since Bill was a manufacturer, he could change the serial number to S.S.1. He contacted several of us, and the end result was a few more, six in all, Skeeter Skelton Sixguns.

They went to Bill Grover himself and Bob Baer, Terry Murbach, Bart Skelton, Jim Wilson and me. Mine is numbered S.S. 4. Only the theme of a Skeeter Skelton Sixgun and the S.S. serial numbers are of the same style and sequence, as these sixguns are not identical, as each man incorporated their own ideas into what they wanted their Skeeter Gun to be like.

“All seven of the Skeeter Skelton Sixguns came together in 1992 as we all gathered, including John Wootters, and held a memorial service for Skeeter in the mountains of Colorado, each of us firing off a .44 Special salute to our friend. As I said, although all seven of us have S.S. Sixguns, they are all quite different, revealing the individual taste of the owners.

Revealing Facts

One of the coolest revelations came when Bobby removed the ramshorn stocks. On the one stock panel is a note confirming the story. Written is “Skeeter’s gun for John Wooters by Bob Baer, 1990.”

Also, the grip frame is scratched with “Skeeter’s gun” and “SS1.” Just as stories are passed down from generation to generation, special guns are passed from collector to collector. We don’t own these items; we’re simply keepers of such treasures for the next lucky collector.

Just as guns pass from hand to hand, stories are passed as well. This one sparked from Skeeter and John Wooters’ friendship, was shared by John Taffin, and is now shared by me, adding a few more details and photos for others to marvel over.

I may be getting softer and more sentimental the older I get, but it’s a good feeling learning and sharing stories like these. Up-and-coming sixgunners need to know these stories to emulate, learn and remember the great sixgunners who lived before us, in hopes that the fire never dies out.