GUS NORCROSS Founder, Owner & Operator of Angus Arms

Biography A graduate of Wells High School, Wells, Maine, Gus began collecting military rifles as a teenager. Living just 16 miles from one of the largest gun shops in New England was a corrupting factor. Most of the meager wages he earned working at his father’s hardware store were spent on old Lee-Enfields or 1903 Springfields and ammo to feed them (or gas for the 400cid Pontiac). Enlisting in the Army in 1976 changed all that. Uncle Sam gave Gus modern guns to play with, such as M-3 Grease Guns, 1911 pistols and M-16s (the 6.5lb handy ones that actually fired effective ammo the way Stoner intended). After four years as a tank crewman on Sheridan tanks, gun jeeps and M60A1 main battle tanks, peacetime became boring and Gus was honorably discharged. An enlistment in the Maine Army National Guard followed. Before long, the Guard was looking for M-60 machinegun crewmen to send to the Nation Guard Bureau Championships (Wilson Matches) at Camp Robinson, Arkansas. Free guns and ammo for Gus again! Several seasons passed on the machinegun ranges at Camp Robinson and Ft. Benning. Next, the Guard needed M-16 shooters to attend the Wilson Matches on the Combat Rifle Team. Gus was drafted for this duty, all the while protesting that the only long gun he really fired in the Army was a Browning .50 M2 mounted on a tank turret! Trips to Camp Robinson and Ft. Benning followed, learning to fire the Black Rifle as a precision weapon. Leg points and a national record came quickly. One thing led to another, and Gus was soon on the Combat Pistol Team as well, firing one of John Browning’s finest creations against the teams from 49 other states. More leg points, this time with the pistol. Then one day, the State Marksmanship Coordinator asked Gus if he wanted to go to school to learn how to build National Match 1911 pistols. Learning to build guns and getting paid for it; what could be better? Trips to the National Guard Marksmanship Training Unit headquarters in Nashville followed, as did various NRA summer schools in the accurizing of the 1911, M-14, bolt rifles and .22 pistols. In 1994, the dawn of the Black Rifle in competition, Gus traveled to North Carolina to learn the fledgling art of building the AR-15 for NRA highpower competition. Gus made trips to the National Matches at Camp Perry in 1994-1998 as an armorer for the NG All Guard Team (pistol), and fired in both the Service Rifle and Long Range Rifle matches (as a civilian competitor). These trips came to an end with retirement from military service in 1998. The Guard was becoming disinterested in marksmanship activities so it was time to go. Nowadays, Gus is an active civilian highpower rifle competitor, mostly in local matches. He went retro after attaining an NRA Master classification and currently competes with the M-14 and M-1 Garand rifles simply because they are more fun to shoot than .223 cal. service rifles. To fund his activities, Gus runs his own one-man gunsmith shop and participates in the Federal welfare program at the local shipyard as an overpaid union employee building Navy destroyers. Life is good.

Gus with the Maine State Service Rifle Trophy, which he won in 2003 shooting an M14 that he built