A QUICK GOOGLING DISAPPOINTED. There was no tidy Wikipedia summary, only a couple of forum threads and a few links to defunct auctions showcasing La Bantchni’s always stunning rifles. Information was scanty, anecdotal, and tantalizing. Sources suggested Jules La Bantchni wasn’t our maker’s real name, but one he adopted early on for undisclosed reasons. Active from the early 1930s through the late 1970s or early 1980s, Jules had been the total package, single-handedly crafting impeccable rifles from fine walnut and steel, then enhancing the result with scroll and gold leaf. Born to Austrian/German parents in Missouri or Illinois, depending on which record you wanted to believe, Jules did interior design work in Chicago, moved to California where he helped fashion movie sets, and built his first rifle in the early 1930s. He operated his own retail businesses, Olympic Custom Made Guns, and later, Jules’s Guns in Santa Monica; at some point he worked out of the Pachmayr shop, and then from a shop behind his house. He catered to the Hollywood crowd and favored big-bore rifles.

Perhaps the most solid information on La Bantchni came from Henry Stebbins’s Rifles: A Modern Encyclopedia, published in 1958. Stebbins earned a Ph.D. in English, and his well-written book provides an excellent window into the state of rifles and riflery in mid-20th century America. Several of Jules’s rifles are showcased in a chapter on custom guns, and Stebbins even persuaded a reluctant La Bantchni to summarize his thoughts on custom rifles in print. Jules cited the best English sporters as very good and Griffin & Howe rifles as the American gold standard, and his goal was to emulate and refine their style and equal their quality. He admitted that at first he was nowhere close, but now considered himself fully their equal. P.O. Ackley, a preeminent gunsmith and stockmaker of the day, apparently agreed, acknowledging in his own section in Stebbins’s book that Jules was “one of the best stockmakers in the United States.”

As a young adult, the kid had been infatuated with Beethoven, and had read a handful of biographies before deciding that the messiness of the composer’s life wasn’t the point. The point was the music. Similarly, the kid, no scholar and tired of chasing slippery facts, knew all he needed to know about Jules La Bantchni the day the rifle arrived. What he knew was, the guy loved fine rifles and wanted to build the best ones on earth, and that he came closer than most.

“MRM! Do you realize who this rifle may have been built for? You said this guy catered to the Hollywood set! John Wayne’s real name was Marion Robert Morrison! And the length of pull is over 14 inches, which the Duke would have needed! And he was a hunter who liked guns and actually had guns named after him!”

The .284 was composed around a commercial Oberndorf action in the style of Jules’s heavy rifles, with a short forend, quarter rib with one fixed and two flip-up sights, Pilkington QD lever, drop magazine, and a clever tang safety to override the Mauser wing safety when the scope was attached. Fine stippling covered the quarter rib, front sight ramp, and scope bases, and small scrolls and rosettes peeked out from unlikely places on the metal. The stock, inletted with frightening precision, was checkered in a mullered-point pattern, but tiny fleur-de-lis surprised the viewer at the midpoints of borders. Discovering these small touches was like finding Waldo. The only gold leaf on the .284 was the caliber designation on the rib, and on the barrel, J. La Bantchni, Maker, U.S.A.

Not surprisingly, Jules’s rifle is completely at home in the hands. One of the kid’s gun-wise buddies picked up the .284 and proclaimed it the best feeling rifle he’d ever touched. Something of a movie buff, he nearly dropped his teeth when he saw the initials carved in faux relief on the name shield.

Little-known gunmaker Jules La Bantchni produced world-class rifles that were as much art as craft, as in this Mauser in .284 Winchester.

Little-known gunmaker Jules La Bantchni produced world-class rifles that were as much art as craft, as in this Mauser in .284 Winchester.

“MRM! Do you realize who this rifle may have been built for? You said this guy catered to the Hollywood set! John Wayne’s real name was Marion Robert Morrison! And the length of pull is over 14 inches, which the Duke would have needed! And he was a hunter who liked guns and actually had guns named after him!”

A tantalizing possibility, but to the kid it was no more important than the life story of Beethoven—or of Jules. The main point for the kid was the rifle itself, which removed dang near from in front of perfect.

The Jules rifle wasn’t in his hands, however, when the biggest buck the kid had seen this year materialized out of the brush on a cold and breezy December morning. Though directly downwind, the rut-addled buck neither caught the kid’s scent nor saw him when he twisted around for the shot. At the rifle’s mild bark, the buck dropped without a quiver. The kid waited for his nerves to settle before he lifted the flattened, oddly shaped bolt handle and caught the spent cartridge case. The headstamp read .243 Winchester.

PROUST’S AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL sprang from childhood recollections conjured by the taste of the tea-dipped madeleine, which he circled back to 3,000 pages later near the novel’s end.

Late one night, while following the meandering braids of the old master’s book, it came to the kid that his rifles were more than mere artifacts of wood and steel that he had been born with an eye for; they were tangible links to the people, places, and events that the decades had lovingly etched into his heart. They were, in short, his own madeleines. The scarred .375 kindled images of the Masailand buffalo that had blossomed out of his early reading of Hemingway; the graceful .35 Whelen Mauser kept fresh his memories of the irascible north Alabama judge who had built it for him as a gift; the honey-and-gold-stocked .257, built by his psychologist friend, brought back many cold but warm nights in the old brainologist’s basement, hashing out the rifle’s details. A half-dozen other rifles spun up playbacks of unexceptional bucks taken on exceptional hunts, and of the friends who had been there. His latest, the .243 Ruger flatbolt he used on the rut-addled buck, had taken him full circle back to the muddy bean field where he had waited for his father a lifetime ago.