When a country quail hunter’s retail store dominated national gun sales
- kb5947
- Feb 1
- 5 min read
Remington's WAL-MART collectible and simpler times
BY KELLY BOSTIAN
It’s easy to forget Walmart’s former status as a dominant force in the national firearms sales market, and even easier to forget the country-boy status of its founder.
A 2001 boxed collectible that arrived this week, a 12-gauge Remington Model 1100 Special Field, Sam Walton Limited Edition–with the original “WAL-MART” hang tag noting the price at $399.96–took us all back in time this week.
That was the name, WAL-MART, which became Wal-Mart and finally Walmart in 2008. From the 1980s, through the 1990s, and into the early 2000s, Walmart was the nation’s largest gun retailer.
Nearly 10 years after he died in 1992, Remington honored the retail giant’s founder’s memory with a series of collectible Sam Walton Special Edition Model 1100s. Walton is wearing his “WAL-MART” cap in the shotgun etching. It marked the end of an era in more ways than one.
Tulsa is home to a man who remembers those commemorative guns and Walton very well.
Sports World’s Jim Prall was long a Remington sales rep, including the era when these shotguns were issued, and dating back to the early 1970s, when he regularly visited the main WAL-MART office in Bentonville, headquarters for what was then seven regional stores.
The internet is full of opinions about these limited editions, but short on old press releases or even news clippings about them. A single reference to an uncredited listing at Morphy Auctions notes 5,000 made in 12, 20, and 28-gauge. Prall recalled the numbers in general terms.
“Originally, the plan was to make, and I don’t know what it ended up being, the 12-gauge was 2,000, the 20-gauge was 1,000, and the 28-gauge was 200,” he said.
The lightweight 1100 field was a good fit for the honor in that era, as Walton is remembered not just as an avid quail hunter but as a dedicated pursuer. The brand Ol’ Roy dog food is well known, but few Walmart shoppers likely know it was Walmart’s first private-label product, named for Walton’s quail dog, an English setter.
“That’s how they ended up in Bentonville, you know,” Prall said. “They started in eastern Arkansas, and he lost his lease, so he decided to move to where he was hunting, and at that time, it was northwest Arkansas.”
Family connections
Walton’s biography “Made In America” hints of even broader quail–and family–interests, as he likely hunted his father-in-law’s ranch in Rogers County.
L.S. Robson, whose only daughter, Helen, married Walton on Valentine’s Day in 1943, became a mentor and was the financier behind Walton’s first store, the Walton’s Five-and-Dime.
Historians list Robson as a major influence in Rogers County. He was a longtime Claremore city attorney, the founder of Rogers County Bank (now RCB Banks), and the owner of mining and oil interests. Also, he owned the 18,500-acre Robson Family Ranch, land now occupied by Robson’s incorporated town of Fair Oaks, parts of Catoosa and Broken Arrow, including the Forest Ridge community.
No doubt, back in the day, Walton and Ol’ Roy found plenty of quail in those hills east of Tulsa.
Walton’s shotgun of choice was a 28-gauge Remington 11-48, the tough post-World War II successor to the Model 11, a John Browning-designed autoloader that ceased production in 1947 and the predecessor to the 1100, which would become the most popular gas-operated autoloader in the nation.
The 11-48 was tough, and still incorporated Browning’s indestructible long-recoil spring action design. And Walton always had several of them, according to Prall.“He always had five or six of them,” he said. “To him, he said a gun is a tool, and that’s how he used them. He’d pull it out and shoot the gun in the air a few times, and if it worked, he’d take it with him.”
After Arkansas and Oklahoma quail dwindled, Walton leased a South Texas ranch–adjacent to the King Ranch–to hunt quail, Prall said.
21st Century Changes
In a 2006 column bemoaning Wal-Mart’s shift from shotguns to sushi and espresso, Panama City, Florida Times Herald Outdoor Writer Scott Lindsey noted that Wal-Mart managers met at the lease. With several Texas stores in the region, Walton was said to visit stores in his hunting clothes often to meet local employees.
Walton did not live to see the day that his stores became a billion-dollar-a-day enterprise or to witness multiple mass shootings and the abandonment of its firearm sales dominance.
The store struggled with the issue for years, but 2019 was the last straw, with shootings that hit close to home at Walmart stores in Southhaven, Mississippi, and with the deaths of 23 at its El Paso, Texas store.
The stores no longer allow open carry, no longer sell handguns (even in Alaska), or handgun and common rifle ammunition used in AR-style guns (.223 and 5.56). And only some stores still sell traditional hunting-style rifles and shotguns to customers 21 and over who pass a “green-light” background check.
It’s a far cry from the days of a Five-and-Dime store owned by a man with quail guns left banging around inside his pickup truck.
Prall said those guns were quite something. The hunter used them as guards to cross fences, and they rarely saw a cleaning rod.
“I was his maintenance man, you know,” Prall said. “I’d go over there to see him, and his secretary would have a note to see her before I left. That would mean he had a couple of guns to fix,” Prall said. “They were the worst-looking guns you’d ever see.”
That is not true of Remington’s Sam Walton 1100s, however. Although Walton probably never wielded a smooth English (straight-grip) stock, Remington fans and upland hunters loved the Special Field for its shorter barrels, light weight, and that smooth stock. Customers also appreciated the higher-grade walnut stocks and forearms.
Prall said many of the guns were snatched up by Walmart employees exercising requests for the guns through a limited number of open SKUs available to each store.
Now, collectors seek out unused sets in 12, 20, and 28, and the values are much higher than on the original hang tag.
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