[johnwilliamson062]

I used my google foo a bit last night and stumbled upn the track of the wolf site. I liked how they set-up their build options. Much friendlier than a lot of their competitors.

Thank you for the other links. I will continue investigating.

That is an interesting question and I thought about it in a round-a-bout way myself.

We can look back at catologs and see that in 1900 such and such gun cost $3 and be ever so jealous, but run it through an inflation calculator, which I believe to generally give us low modern numbers anyways, and it becomes clear guns used to be EXPENSIVE. People didn't own multiple guns with no utilitarian purpose like today.

My thoughts:
It seems as though most private hunting rifles were not .68+ caliber rifles like military guns. I say this because I do not see many listed in auctions for those large calibers. Maybe it seems that way b/c I am not so interested.
It also seems like it was somewhat common for families to have a smaller caliber gun for youth use based on anecdotes. My GUESS is squirrel gun may have been a term of derision for these youth guns.