Has anyone been to Hogleg Smith?

[Mater]

My only experience with him is through my brother-in-law who did not have a good experience. He called and was inquiring about having several things done to a few different firearms and said Hogleg was fairly rude over the phone and just seemed disinterested in answering his questions or doing the work. Again not firsthand experience, but I figured I'd chime in in any case.

I had a similar experience, he's not much of a phone person. Go see him in person, he will talk as long as you want. I carried a Vaquero and a blackhawk to him last year with instructions that "I would be out of town for two weeks for work and to get to them when he could", He called about 3 days later and said they were ready when I was. The Vaquero is sweet, smooth as silk with a light trigger, the blackhawk is very smooth but with a heavier trigger because he wanted to keep the lock time quick for hunting. I am very satisfied.
I have a few other projects that will be making the hour long drive to him shortly. The man does excellent work and is full service but single actions are his specialty.

 

[brownbmo]

He is great, fair price and will get it done when he says he will. Call ahead and make an appointment. He's the only gunsmith I would use in the area, I'm lucky he's only 20 min away.

 

[hops2899]

Hogleg had one of my rifles and a revolver of mine from Sept 14-January 14(quoted 2-4 weeks) and did absolutely no work at all to either. He was also rude and arrogant making no apologies. He came highly recommended but in the end turned out to be a total waste of time. Undecided on the revolver work at this point but I did take the rifle to Nate at Fort Daniel and could not be happier. That man did the job right and was timely to boot. Fort Daniel from here on out.

 

[1006]

Kind of sounds like a self learned hack, like me, but I only work on my stuff. Trigger jods are pretty basic stuff. Repairs are a challenge.

 

[shell_waster]

Many moons ago I took a mossberg 835 to him because I couldn't get a fired shell out of the chamber by working the pump so I would have to remove the barrel to remove to spend shell. Once the spent shell was removed the new shell would hang up in the magazine tube. I gave him several shells to try as well as the gun. He had it for two weeks and called to tell me it was ready for pick up. I asked what was wrong with it and he said the forearm arms were, "out of timing." Well I thanked him and told him I would be there to pick it up in a day or two as I was preparing to go out of town on a duck hunting trip. When I arrived to pick it up it was around 6:00 pm if I recall and he was extremely rude and said something to the effect that he doesn't appreciate people showing up at his house at all hours since he has a family. I reminded him that he called me. I paid the man and went on my way.
Fast forward two days later and I'm sitting in a duck blind 6 hours from Hogleg's shop with this same gun and it does the same thing as if he never touched it. My buddies were having a field day and I was getting hot.
We got back to the lodge, grabbed a bite to eat and I cooled down enough to politely called him to explain what happened in hopes he could explain to me how to fix it so I could enjoy the remainder of my trip. Without an apology he says,"that shouldn't happen." I asked him if he had any issue with it after he fixed it and he said he never fired a shot through it. I asked what he did with the shells I provided to him to ensure my gun was fixed and he said, "well they must be on my work bench." At this point I boiled over and said things I'm not too proud of.
Now that I'm older and wiser I wish I had handled the situation better. I ended up completely stripping the gun when we got home and took a brass bristle brush to the chamber and magazine tube. I replaced the extractor and magazine spring and the gun worked flawlessly after that. I learned many lessons with that experience. I'm not sure he remembers that conversation but because of my experience I will now try to resolve any issue myself before taking it to a gunsmith that is much closer. Maybe shotguns are not his specialty or something he enjoys working on, after all he does come highly recommended by the cowboy shooting community.