You know this stuff (if you're a gun guy) but it never gets fully considered until you're trudging along and you suddenly realize that something is very different. Case in point: my post-Christmas trip to the "old country" this year. I had on a borrowed coat because the weather was "normal" for the first time in about 3-years and what I had brought wasn't quite sufficient. Meaning that it was "real" winter there, the wade in the snow kind of winter. Accordingly, I was wearing long underwear (both tops and bottoms), a heavy shirt, a vest, and a very substantial coat. This significantly affects what length of pull you will need on a shotgun for wing shooting. My Dickinson 28-gauge, which normally fits me shockingly well at 14 3/4-inches, was something of a challenge to mount. If a grouse had flushed at that moment, it would have been dammed-ably hard to hit him.
My solution to all that was thankfully simple (in a part of the world where nothing seems to be simple anymore), and it took the form of a sweet 1939 Ithaca M-37 in 16, a change of shells in a pockets of my game vest, and a short re-familiarization with the mechanics of a pre-war pumpgun. No big deal right? OK, what do you do when you know you're slightly faster with a double and you really want (or need) to succeed the next time a bird launches? With the 37, I took it off-safe in the grousiest of covers to help myself a little bit in the speed department (Pennsylvania grouse never dawdle), but that is seldom a good option (for a number of reasons we also all know). A nice, light game gun that has the appropriate length of pull to mount properly over heavy cloths is clearly the ideal solution here, but how many folks are ready to saw about three quarters of an inch off of their favorite fine birdgun? Not many here, I'm sure. Waterfowlers never have to even consider this particular issue, because the weather is almost always challanging and they dress and equip themselves accordingly. That's not always the case in the uplands.
Is there an ideal solution here (other than buying yet another gun, which I just did)?
Last edited by Lloyd3; 01/19/17 04:40 PM.
