It has rained most of the day and is supposed to rain most of tomorrow. I’m stuck inside and when I started looking for something to do, I didn’t want to do what needs to be done. So I got to thinking about my 16 gauge L.C. Smith and my other 16, an AYA no. 2. I’ve been reading some books by Michael McIntosh. He was saying what a good round the sixteen is if you don’t overload the shells.
AYA no 2 on the bottom and the L.C. Smith on top.
AYA on top and L.C. Smith on bottom.
My 16 gauge AYA and 7 quail.
I got the L.C. Smith off my cousin’s son. Cal Morgan, my cousin’s husband, had bought the Smith off of a fire fighter that we both worked with. I had been with him the first time he had shot the gun and the first time he had hunted with it. Cal was older than me and passed away several years ago. His son didn’t want the 16 gauge so I bought it from him.
It sat around in my gun safe for a few months without me shooting it. It was choked modified and full. Not hardly a quail gun. I was talking to a friend that has a few L.C. Smiths and he said, “get the chokes opened up. It’s not really a collectors item anyway”. I should have thought of that.
I took it to a very well known gun shop just across the state line, in Kansas, from me. I told them to open the right choke to skeet and the left one to improved cylinder. I had a bad feeling when I picked it up and when I got it home I found that they had bored the barrels opposite of what I wanted. The right barrel was improved cylinder and the left was skeet. I didn’t even call them. It was too late to do anything about it then anyway.
The first time I hunted with it I thought that I should be wearing a tie and smoking a pipe. That’s the kind of pictures I remembered from the 1950’s. I was hunting with English setters. It all fit except I didn’t have a pipe and it’s been a long time since I smoked.
With 28 inch barrels and on a feather weight frame it still weighed over 6 3/4 pounds. But with 1 ounce loads the recoil was really mild. And according to McIntosh 1 ounce loads are the best for the 16 gauge.
This was the first side by side I had ever hunted with. And the first gun with 2 triggers I had ever hunted with. I was hunting down near Emporia Kansas and was trying to get used to the side by side. As I walked along behind the dogs I would raise the gun to my shoulder without taking the safety off. Just trying to get used to a different sight picture. One time as I threw the gun to my shoulder there were two quail right where the gun was pointing. I didn’t get a shot because I hadn’t moved the gun off safe but it was a surprise. The quail must have flushed from the dogs and flew back over me.
I followed the quail to where they landed and got a couple of points. If I remember right I killed both quail over points.
Sally
Although I have other quail guns I really wanted to learn to shoot a side by side so I took this gun several hunts in a row. It dawned on me when I was out one day that the last hunt I had killed 4 quail with 4 shells. I had 2 quail with 2 shells this day and I really wanted to see how far this would go. I wasn’t picking shots, either. I remember one of these quail had been shot through a hedge tree.
There was a good buffer strip beside a fence row. The fence row only had one tree and it was about half way through the buffer strip. When I got close the three dogs I had down were on point. I remember that I had Blaze and Whitey down but I don’t remember the third dog. One of the dogs was on point and the other two were backing. I walked in and the quail flushed behind me. I whirled around and the whole covey put the tree between me and them. I shot once but I knew I had missed. I tried to watch the covey down.
As I stood watching the quail fly off the walk-in place I noticed Whitey coming toward me from around the tree with a quail in her mouth. It wasn’t the bird I had shot at, I don’t think, but I hadn’t wasted a shot. I think that was the seventh straight. I’ve had longer streaks of quail killed but not for a long time. I think I missed the next time I got into some quail but I don’t remember for sure.
3 quail
The old L.C. Smith didn’t have ejectors so I started looking for another sixteen. A friend, Robin Barrows, called me one day. He was in the Cabela’s store in St. Louis and they had just what I wanted. A 16 gauge AYA number 2 with 29 inch barrels, weighing 6 1/4 pounds. It was lighter than the old one and had ejectors. I asked the salesman if he would send the gun to the store in Kansas so I could look at it. He didn’t want to. He said they didn’t get any credit if the gun was sold at another store. I told him to hold on to it I would be right down.
I live in Independence, Missouri almost on the western border and St. Louis is on the eastern border, 3 1/2 hours away. But for the right gun a guy will drive. Robin met me there and introduced me to the salesman. I had brought a couple of guns with me and sold them to Cabela’s and brought my new prize home.
The chokes on this one was too tight for me and I had them opened but not at the well known place in Kansas that had bored the L.C. Smith opposite of what I wanted.
I enjoy shooting the 16 gauge and I load shells for them both. I have a skeet range only a couple of miles from my house so I shoot pretty often. I load 3/4 ounce loads in my 12 gauge, my 16 gauge and the 20 gauge, for shooting skeet. I load 5/8 ounce loads for the 28 gauge. If you load 1 ounce loads a 25 pound bag of shot will load 400 shells. If you load 3/4 ounce a 25 pound bag of shot will load 566 shells.
I shoot low gun and the lighter loads cuts down on recoil. All of the skeet shooting is just practice for quail hunting anyway.
Luke