It's definitely not a gun for the duck blind. It is best for your smaller upland game like quail and dove. That is what I will use it for.
I'm not a collector either. Well, I do have a dozen or so vintage duck calls but that's not much of a collection by duck call standards. Same with decoys. I'm positively not a gun collector by any stretch the the imagination. I own a Remington 870 I traded for another gun forty years ago, a Benelli M2, a Fox HE, and the above Fox XE. Those latter two are mine because my closest friend, boat building and woodworking mentor, and hunting partner, was a collector.
His collection was sold to a "family friend" who took advantage of Jeff's elderly father. Those are forever gone. I wouldn't know many of them anyway because Jeff didn't talk about them all that much. He did talk about his Fox doubles, so I was familiar with them. There were a few guns in Jeff's collection, the Foxes, a Browning Citori, and a Winchester pump, kept separate and escaped being part of the sold-off collection. I was gifted the HE by his brother. The XE was gifted to a mutual friend who decided to sell it to me because he isn't too much of a hunter and his kids have zero interest.
Somehow I ended up with two very desirable guns that my hunting partner had great appreciation for. Before I met Jeff I never knew anything about classic doubles and had never heard the legend of Nash Buckingham's Bo Whoop (another FOX HE). Now I do have appreciation for classic doubles. These will remain in my family. My son will get them when I am done. He knew and hunted with Jeff and recognizes these guns are a reminder of Jeff and a part of our duck hunting memories together.
