Minimalist Outdoorsman’s Combination Gun: The Marbles Game Getter (1st Model)

Available from Morphys here:
https://auctions.morphyauctions.com/_C__MARBLES_1908_GAME_GETTER__22_RF____44_GAME_GET-LOT663251.aspx

Webster L. Marbles was a lifelong outdoorsman, who spent 30 years working as a surveyor, trapper, and lumberman among other jobs. He invented an axe with a safety cover to prevent accidents, and started the Marbles Safety Axe Company to produce it. Then in 1908, he designed a minimalist combination gun to provide everything he thought necessary in a firearm for surviving in the woods. It had a .22 rimfire barrel on top and a smoothbore .44 barrel below, with a break action system, single hammer to fire either barrel, folding stock, and both notch and aperture sights. As initially offered, the barrels were 12” (300mm) long. A variety of other options were added fairly quickly, including 15” and 18” barrels. A total of 9,981 of these Game Getters were made by the time production ended for the First World War. A simplified second model was reintroduced in 1921, but the guns were hit hard by the 1934 passage of the National Firearms Act, which required a $200 tax on all but the very longest barrel models. As a result, American sales fell off a cliff, and most of the remaining production went to Canada. Most Game Getters were never registered because of the exorbitant tax, and are contraband today. This example is one of the small number made with 18” barrels, the minimum needed to avoid NFA regulation and so it is legally treated like any normal rifle or shotgun.