John Browning is the most important figure in the development of modern automatic and semi-automatic firearms and is credited with 128 gun patents — his first was granted October 7, 1879.
Browning influenced nearly all categories of firearms design. He invented or made significant improvements to single-shot rifles, lever action rifles, and slide action firearms. His most significant contributions were in the area of autoloading firearms. He developed the autoloading pistol by inventing the slide design found on nearly every modern automatic handgun. He also developed the first gas-operated machine gun, the Colt-Browning Model 1895 — a system that would surpass recoil operation in popularity. Other successful designs include the Browning .50 caliber machine gun, the Browning Automatic Rifle, and a ground-breaking semi-automatic shotgun, the Browning Auto-5.
Working in Ogden in 1852, production examples of the Browning single-shot caught the attention of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company who dispatched a representative to evaluate the competition. Winchester bought the design and moved production to their Connecticut factory. From 1883, Browning worked in partnership with Winchester and designed a series of rifles and shotguns, most notably the Winchester Model 1887 and Model 1897 shotguns and the lever-action Model 1886, Model 1892, Model 1894 and Model 1895 rifles, most of which are still in production today in some form.
Perhaps the most infamous singular Browning-designed firearm was a FN Model 1910 handgun, serial number 19074. In 1914, Gavrilo Princip used the .380 ACP pistol to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie. This event arguably sparked World War I. The pistol was rediscovered in 2004.
On November 26, 1926, while working on a self-loading pistol design for FN in Liege, he died of heart failure in the office of his son Val A. Browning. The 9 mm self-loading pistol he was working on when he died was eventually completed in 1935, by Belgian designer Dieudonne Saive. Released as the Fabrique Nationale GP35, it was more popularly known as the Browning Hi-Power. The Superposed shotgun was his last firearm design, marketed originally with twin triggers. A single trigger modification was later completed by his son, Val.
You can't drive down country roads during dove season without hearing those shotguns blasting away. And even on a day like the day this one was hidden, two days before dove season, we heard lots of blasts coming out of the woods. Hopefully those were just hunters out practicing and not trying to get a jump on the official start of the season. We found a nice little spot for this bison tube cache in the Wilson Chapel Cemetery. It's green in color and quite well hidden. The difficulty rating will certainly depend on how the cache is replaced each time. But for sure, it starts out right.
UPDATE 10/28/10: Cache is now a black nano.
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