This thread is in part responsible for my latest purchase, a 625 Mountain Gun in 45 Colt. The photo is on the LGS counter during DROS, this being California our government doesn't trust us enough to do away with the 10-day wait even when we already legally have another revolver in our pocket which seems pretty irrational.
I know the LGS owner fairly well, so besides knocking a little extra off the price he gave me the back story. This one and several others just came in on consignment a few days ago from a retired CHP guy who is now in his mid-70s and can't shoot big bore anymore because of severe arthritis. He apparently traded for a .22 as part of the deal and that's what he shoots now. He says most of what he consigned has had one box of ammo through it and then went in the safe, and that's entirely possible for this 625. A couple of very minor scuffs on it, otherwise like new, rock solid lockup. The test casing is still in the S&W box.
The Hogue's fit my hand well enough but the tops have warped a little away from the frame during all that storage time and the slight bit of give is annoying, and I'm not really a fan of finger grooves. So I'm looking around and thinking about some different stocks. On the way back I picked up some 45 Colt reloading dies and some Starline brass, will probably order some 255 gr bullets online and have a box all loaded well before pickup day.
For the past several years I've been focused on a large local project, which is atypical for me... there's nothing larger than black bear here unless one believes in bigfoot, so various semi-autos and .357 revolvers have been plenty adequate. I'm now moving on to new projects so could be back to my more typical and wider ranging travel patterns soon, so I want something a little bigger available in case of a short notice trip to someplace where that's a smarter choice. At the same time I wanted a stainless gun, because here it rains all winter. Last week I was on a remote site in 40 mph winds and horizontal sheeting heavy rain, and my polymer HK handled that just fine but I'd sure hate to subject a classic blued revolver to a few days of that. And the mountain gun at 36 oz should be good on those all day hikes. I may head to the backcountry early in the new year to test it out.
I'm off to browse holsters and speedloaders...