We have had another hot week of weather. I didn’t get much training done this week because of trading trucks and the heat. Thinking about something to write about on my blog I decided to tell about my transition to usually hunting with a side by side. I hunted for years with a light weight 20 gauge A5 Browning. After a lot of years I changed to a 20 gauge Montefeltro Benelli.
The LC Smith
Another shot of the LC Smith.
AYA 16 gauge No. 2
The change to side by sides came about by chance. I didn’t wake up one morning and think I’ll just start shooting side by sides. A really good friend, Calvin Morgan, passed away and he had a 16 gauge LC Smith side by side. I had been with him the first time he had shot it.
We were getting ready to hunt in northern Missouri when he told me to stop he wanted to shoot the LC Smith since he had just bought it and wasn’t sure it would shoot. I pulled the truck to the side of a dirt road and as he got out I saw him slip a yellow shell into the chamber. I said, “Cal, I think that’s a 16 gauge”. He said, “No. It’s a 20”. He shot the gun into the bank of the ditch and when he got back into the truck he handed me a shell that had swollen to fit the 16 gauge chamber. “Don’t tell anyone about this”, he said. And as long as he was alive, I never told anyone.
But with his passing I wanted that gun just to have something that he had owned. I bought it from his son and put it in in the gun safe. When quail season opened I wanted to hunt with it but it was choked modified and full. I was talking to a friend about how tight the chokes were and he asked why I didn’t get them opened up. The gun wasn’t a real collectors item.
Made sense to me so I took it to a well known gun shop in Kansas to get the chokes opened. I specified, skeet in the right barrel and improved cylinder in the left. When I got it back they had done the barrels opposite of what I wanted and they had not gone down the barrels to ream them but had got them off centered by going in from the end of the barrels. I wasn’t happy about it but what was done was done.
I started using it on bird hunts. The first few times I felt like I should be smoking a pipe like the pictures of the guys from the 1920s and 1930s did. After all I was hunting with English setters and shooting a double barrel.
The first hunt I was by myself and trying to get used to shooting the double I would occasionally bring it to my shoulder pointing above the tree line. Once as I walked along and raised the gun to my shoulder there were a couple of quail flying right about where the gun was pointing. Evidently the dogs had got a covey up and they flew right in front of me but I was so surprised that I never fired a shot. I did watch them down and got some dog work on them.
AYA 20 gauge No. 2
Later I had a stretch of several hunts where I didn’t kill a lot of birds but I hit everything I shot at. Over 3 or 4 hunts I had 8 or 9 birds without a miss. I had a couple of young females along on a hunt as well as a couple of older dogs. As I walked along the edge of a bean field one of the older dogs pointed. When I got to him a covey got up behind me and my feet were tangled in some weeds as I turned and shot. I was only able to get off one shot and I missed. I thought, “well the streak comes to an end”.
I reloaded my gun as I watched most of the covey fly off the place I was hunting. One of the young females came to me with a dead quail in her mouth. I didn’t even know she would retrieve. I had hit a bird that I didn’t see fall. Was the streak still going or because I missed the bird I shot at but hit another was it still going? I didn’t know but as all streaks, good or bad, it finally came to an end. I don’t remember how long it lasted. But it really got me into side by sides but also 16 gauges.
I wasn’t very good shooting two triggers to start but I spent some time shooting skeet and still do. The first half of the skeet field I shoot the back trigger first, which is the tightest choke, since the high house bird is the farthest from me. Then most of the second half, 5 through 8, I shoot the front trigger first with the exception of station 6 on the double. The low house bird is the farthest so I shoot the back trigger first. Now after several years of shooting skeet this way the double triggers are no problem.
The WR Pape made in 1917
The LC Smith is heavier than I wanted to carry around very much so I bought a Spanish 16 gauge. I really liked it but it started giving me some trouble so I traded it for another. An AYA Number 2 in 16 gauge. It weighs just over 6 pounds and I had it choked the way I wanted. Since the fiasco with the gun shop I had found a good gunsmith.
Then I saw a 20 gauge AYA Number 2 that was lighter than the 16. The 16 gauge had 29 inch barrels and the 20 has 27. After shooting it a little while, mainly at skeet, I discovered that I shoot the longer barrels better. I still shoot the 20 some because it’s a pretty little thing. But one day I was at my gunsmith’s house and saw a WR Pape 12 gauge with 30 inch barrels. It was heavier than the 16 even but it was really well made and to my eye, pretty.
The Pape only shoots 2 1/2 inch shells but they are readily available from RST. I got a flat of shells from RST and started shooting skeet with it. My gunsmith opened the chokes, bent and lengthened the stock, with a leather covered pad and I was in business. The Pape weighs about 6 1/2 pounds and I shoot it pretty well.
Webley and Scott 20 gauge with 30 inch barrels.
Then last year late I saw a Webley and Scott, 20 gauge with 30 inch barrels advertised on Guns International. The stock was too short but it shot 2 3/4 shells. I had it sent to my gunsmith and he thought it was in good shape so I bought it. He wanted to put a wood extension on the stock but I opted for adding rubber. My mistake. I didn’t really like it from the get go but being hard headed I was going to live with it.
I shot it for a while then asked to have a wood extension put on. It works better and looks a lot better. When the gunsmith worked on the end of the stock he found a couple of ounces of lead that someone had put in to tame the recoil, I guess. But anyway after the wooden extension the gun weighs under 6 pounds. It’s a delight to carry and it does it’s job well when I do mine.
On bird hunts, as I get older, I’m more into pictures than shooting. If you shoot a bird you have it for a little while but a picture will last a long time. And most times if I get a picture of the dogs on point I can remember the hunt and where it took place. And for sure, quail are too valuable to shoot.
The wood extension on the W&S 20 gauge.
Side by sides may now be an obsession with me. I have bought a few more than I have told about and if I saw one today that I thought was a good buy or a good fit for me, I would be tempted.