The one holster that seemed like the best option to go from the office to the job site and stay comfortable no matter what I was doing, was my ankle holster. I decided to look around for a lighter pistol for an ankle holster.
I really didn’t want to give up my 45 but there just aren’t any 45 pistol options that were light enough for an ankle holster. But at least I had a good excuse to go to gun stores and gun shows whenever I got a chance. This was about 1999 and there were a lot of concealed carry options, not many seemed like they would be a good fit for what I wanted.
I couldn’t go to that many gun shows and gun stores and not buy some guns. Not all of them were suitable for concealed carry, and an ankle holster was out of the question.
Holster options for concealing a Ruger Super Redhawk in 44 Magnum are limited to shoulder rigs. I don’t know how Dirty Harry did it. I didn’t even try to find a holster for the Professional Ordnance Carbon 15… I finally settled on a Smith and Wesson .38 special revolver. It was small and extremely light and the .38 Special round packs a lot of punch. The pistol was so light that I didn’t really like shooting it because after 10 or 15 rounds, my hand hurt.
There were a lot of holster options for it and I tried a few different options until I found one that I liked and was comfortable enough to wear all day. It was a “fur” lined band that wrapped around my leg and fastened with Velcro. I was happy with my new pistol and holster combination but there was still one problem: it was impossible to stop the holster from sliding down my leg when I wore dress shoes or any shoe that had a low top. I was constantly having to re adjust it, but at least I was back to having a pistol with me all the time again.
The .38 special and ankle holster option for concealed carry worked so well that I never left the house without it. I was wearing it at least 10 to 12 hours every day. It took a while but eventually I started to notice the same problem with my Achilles tendon that I had before. It was like wearing a brace 12 hours a day. It was even worse when I had my boots on. When I wear boots, I always wear lace up leather work boots that are at least 8 or 9 inches tall. When I wrapped my ankle holster around my boot it was almost like wearing a cast.
Then one sunny afternoon I was heading out for a motorcycle ride and as I was putting my ankle holster on, I thought to myself that it would be nice to just have a holster on the side of my boot instead of having to strap one on. I wasn’t really sure how it would work but as I thought about it occurred to me that I could just buy a holster and have someone attach It to my boot. Now I had another excuse to go to gun shows…
