I dug this up recently for a gun scholar and to refresh my memory. General Crook, famed in the Indian wars in the southwest, and a fair man, was also an amateur but serious ornithologist, and poses here with a “lifter” Parker, so combining at LEAST three blog themes.
Tag: Shotguns
Desideratum
I would like to get this, if I can figure out how to afford it, quite difficult– perhaps my last best chance for a Best gun… There’s always a way…
Gun Quote with Examples
A bunch of 37’s and a 17 “If an ancient Athenian had to choose between an M12 and an M17-37, he would no doubt have chosen the sexier looking of the two, the Winchester. On the other hand, an ancient Spartan would have grabbed the Remington or Ithaca and shot the Athenian while he oogled …
Guns: Keepers and Projects
In any realistic sense I have “enough” guns but I like to keep things rolling, preferably without spending any (or at least any significant) money, in order to keep my brain stimulated. Besides I like looking at them, just like my art and even the spines of my books– seeing them in the rack is …
More guns: a preview
One like this maybe (Russ Chatham had one)… And you remember this one? Watch this space…
Clapton’s Guns
Apparently Eric Clapton has commissioned and sold more guns than I have (and each and every one was probably worth more than my house). Many articles out there, a few by gunnies, some by folks horrified he would buy guns at all, some just concerned with auction prices. I assume we can all use Google, …
James Wentworth Day and big shoulder guns
Perhaps because I grew up on the New England coast, living a hunter- gatherer’s life and shooting magnum twelves and tens like my father before me, I have always been fascinated by England’s big bores– defined here as the gauges above ten that were made illegal when the first legislation to protect waterfowl from commercial …
New Damascus Steel
Purdey has reinvented Damascus, using a process I don’t even pretend to understand. From Michael Yardley’s site: “Powder steels have around twice the fracture strength of normal steels. The molten steel from the refining furnace runs into a nitrogen-filled vacuum chamber. In the chamber powerful gas beams atomize the alloy into a fine powder. The… …
Big Shotguns
One of the odd American cultural blinkers is that shotguns above ten bore are poacher’s tools, or else pre- modern (Buckingham’s remarkably obtuse and inexplicably influential “Are we shooting 8 gauge guns?”) HE wasn’t, but the Brits made them til WW2, and still shoot them– and will pay good prices. Three examples from a 1996 …
Whoops– Lost and Found
My old friend Steve Grooms, author of two fine books on pheasants (here and here), as well as ones on wolves and cranes, called today. We probably haven’t talked in over twenty years. After much catching up, he gave me an email for more– but it keeps bouncing! He has a good- gun- and book …