The New Model 27 Classic, and the "Classic" Model 27.

Inevitably, if you shoot them long enough, study them hard enough, and want them bad enough, there will be a gun that haunts you, always slipping through your fingers and keeping you awake at night. It lurks tantalizingly close. Your gun-collecting buddy, the one with the solid-gold horseshoe in his rear end, casually mentions picking it up for $100 less than the rest of the free world paid for it 10 years ago and has no interest in selling. Or, walking into the local gunshop--the one you visit three times a week for just the slightest chance that "the gun" might show up on the shelf--a fellow grinning ear to ear slides "the gun" into a case as the clerk signs off on the 4473. If only you had been there an hour earlier. You see them in magazine articles, the author crowing how it was the first gun he ever bought and will be the last gun he ever shoots. But the spot reserved in your gun safe remains empty.

More than any other gun, the firearm that haunts me the most is Smith & Wesson's Registered Magnum and its direct descendant, the Model 27. While plenty of S&W aficionados are sent into conniptions by Dirty Harry's Model 29--insert yawn here--I have always preferred the revolver that was carried by real heroes, not pretend ones. Gen. George S. Patton carried one with a 3.5-inch barrel and blued finish. Fitted with ivory grips and carried nearly as often as his famous Peacemaker, it now resides in the Patton Museum in Fort Knox, Kentucky. So it is highly unlikely I will ever get to shoot, much less own, this particular gun.

While liberating Europe from the Nazis must have been exciting, I would wager the Registered Magnum carried by adventurer and jaguar hunter Sasha Siemel saw its own fair share of excitement in the Mato Grosso jungles. Numerous books and magazine articles included a famous photo of Siemel standing beside a huge jaguar hanging from a tree. In Siemel's right hand is a Registered Magnum with an 8⅜-inch barrel.

As a boy--and even today--I was captivated by the scene, wishing I too could have chased cats through the jungle behind a pack of hounds.

If the adventurer's and general's praise were not enough, longtime Shooting Times Handgun Editor Skeeter Skelton considered the Model 27, with a 5-inch barrel of course, as the world's best all-around handgun. I could not agree more.

Smith & Wesson only registered guns for three years--from 1935 to 1938--with some 5,500 guns leaving the Springfield, Massachusetts, factory before demand overwhelmed output. Myriad barrel lengths, sights, grips, finishes, and even hammers were offered with the Registered, but the factory standardized features to streamline production. When S&W gave all its models numeric designations in 1957, the N-Frame chambered for .357 Magnum became the Model 27. Production of the same but unregistered guns continued until 1994, with interruptions for small engineering changes and World War II.

For me, the Model 27 has proved nearly as elusive as the Registered Magnum, although thousands are floating around. At least I have gotten to hold and shoot a Model 27--a feat as yet unaccomplished with a revolver whose serial number begins with "REG." I can't remember the year, but when my dad brought one home, it was a revelation. The big N-Frame was cased in a walnut box with a velvety blue liner, cleaning rod, brush, and sight-adjustment screwdriver. The barrel was pinned, and the cylinder chambers were counterbored so the cartridge rims sat flush with the cylinder face. A lovely, dark set of Goncalo Alves target grips wrapped tightly around the square butt. The gun had probably been shot a little, but it was hard to tell how much.