Nicely done. Looks like fun. Thanks for sharing.
OWD
Tim,
Thanks for the links. This is on my bucket list.
John
Neat stuff.
For those who haven't shot driven birds previously, my advice would be to shoot "standard" driven birds before you try the really high birds. There was an issue of Shooting Sportsman fairly recently, I believe last year, which contained a couple articles by Chris Batha and Vic Venters on shooting high birds, and the guns and loads that are used. (Anyone recall the specific issue? I think my copy may have gone missing in the course of a move.) The experts will tell you that high birds really aren't a sxs game. Or at least not your standard sxs game gun. Most of the shooters who are high bird specialists use heavy, long-barreled OU's (think sporting clays guns) shooting heavier charges of larger shot than are used on a more typical driven bird shoot.
You won't find really high birds just anywhere, for the simple reason that it requires the right environment (tall hills and trees) to put them over the guns at 50 yards elevation or more.
A good tightly chocked pass shooting double like a Fox HE with the lighter frame would work if it was stocked a little high. Also Smith or Win 21. Actually there are/were probably more American guns made like this than English/European.
West Side in Houston has a 100 ft. tower that throws this type of target and they are a real challenge to hit. They are sort of like high speed asprin tablets at 40-50 yds.
Over and unders are just more prolific and available. However, one of the reasons for the popularity of good condition live pigeon/wildfowl/magnum SxS doubles by good makers over the last decade has been demand from those guns shooting high birds with bigger loads who appreciate (or are more used to)SxS doubles.
The UK shooting magazines have now got into an annual ritual of having a 'Top 20 Guns' style feature, with nominated shots being interviewed and their choice of game gun, choke and cartridge listed.
If you want proper high birds, you have to go to proper high bird shoots, like Warter Priory. Most are in Yorkshire, Devon/Exeter and Wales. The 300-500 partridge day at Warter probably cost £2,500-3000 per gun, which is around $3,850-4,620.
I do like my partridge shooting!
Tim
I found that I copied and saved the SSM articles by Batha and Venters. Venters' article makes reference to an article in Fieldsports magazine, which included a survey of "Britain's 15 best driven game shots". 12 of them shot OU's, and one of the 3 sxs shooters stated: "If you want to shoot seriously high pheasants, then use a heavy OU and big loads." If you're shooting only partridge (which would be the case in September), I expect you can get by with both smaller shot and lighter loads, although still probably heavier than the 1 or 1 1/16 oz loads of British 6's used on driven shoots that don't specialize in very high birds.
Venters' article points out that the definition of a "tall" bird has changed in the last century or so: "When Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey published "High Pheasants in Theory and Practice" a year before the First World War, a 30-yard bird was described as "tall", one 40 yards overhead was only occasionally killable, and anything taken much higher was purely a victim of bad luck on the pheasant's part." From what I've seen, that's still a pretty good description of driven shoots that don't specialize in high birds.
In the concluding paragraph of Batha's "Hitting High Pheasants" article, he says: "Still, for us mere mortals, a clean kill on a 40-yard pheasant is an awesome shot to pull off." I'd add "amen!" to that.
Yep, I'd agree with that. I am very pleased to pull down a 40-45 yard bird today with my 1920s English SxS.
I would say that these days high birds are in the 45-60 yard zone in general. My understanding is that they are killable at that range, provided one is using the right hardware and ammunition.
I've not been on a really high bird shoot, but have friends who have. Like them, my concern would be with pricking birds. Just doesn't sit right with the way I have been bought up to shoot. I understand that the day after a high bird shoot, the keepers are out again with their dogs to 'hoover up' the birds that were either missed or died later under some cover, often many hundreds of yards behind the gun line.
Tim
I think I'm with Tim on this.... I spent yesterday shooting long ranges clays in a stiff wind and with trap springs wound pretty tight. Based on the way my targets broke I'd probably be a bit hesitant shooting game at those ranges. A was using pretty stout loads too.
"The experts will tell you that high birds really aren't a sxs game".
Guess they never shot a Parker.
Boats
Even the experts who shoot sxs will tell you that it's not really a sxs game. And I don't think a modern sxs, purpose built for high birds, is going to take a back seat to a Parker.
I say that as someone who's never shot driven birds with anything BUT a sxs. More on the order of the old standby Brit game guns, for that matter. Those sub-7# guns work fine on birds out to 40 yards or a bit more (for those capable of making such shots), but sxs don't seem to do as well on the really tall birds. Just like you don't see very many top notch Sporting Clays shooters using them--even guys who really like sxs.
Tim, I agree with your sentiments about a lot of very tall birds just being "pricked". As does Vic Venters in his article:
"Moreover, a high pheasant gun does not necessarily make a high pheasant killer . . . Arguments rage pro and con in Britain's sporting magazines as to the ethics of presenting birds at ranges where many are only 'pricked' if hit at all . . . The driven game gun has changed much since 1914; good sportsmanship has not. Birds are living creatures; clays are not. Practice and shoot within the limits of your skills, whether your barrels are side by side or one over the other."
I find that very well said.
Haha brilliant thank you to the original poster.
Just spotted a familiar face there!
James.
Thanks for sharing those videos... They're very nicely done.
I have no interest in shooting "high" pheasant. I'm not a good enough shot for those ranges. I'd be worried about wounding too many birds.
I dont get the hype. t's like hoping a covey of quail gets up wild so I can shoot the birds at a farther distance to test my skill. The covey that explodes in my face provides all the challenge I need. Different strokes for different folks I guess.
On the other hand,I would love to try a "normal" pheasant and partridge drive some day.
Adsm
Have to agree with Adam, it seems a bit over kill.
I have shot normal driven pheasant and unless your really shooting regular and are really on form they offer plenty good enough sport.
I had a day, two years ago on a shoot that was much higher (still nothing like the birds the guy in the video is picking out) than birds i usually shoot, the day happened to be windy as well so the birds were really testing, I had fairly open chokes and damp cartridges, i was miles behind everything until the last drive when i finally started to get on them. Some of the birds i had on the last drive made up for the abysmal morning i had.
I think if you want to go out and shoot really high birds like this guy you ought really to be going with your check book and buy the proper cartridges and gun for the job.
There's no doubt in my mind that you're correct. If you want to do a fair bit of high bird shooting, you'd need to ensure your armoury and ammo were up to the task.
I have no real wish to do a high bird day, though I dare say if I were asked I would like to have the experience, at least just the once. I'd have to borrow a gun though!
Tim
Good comments. "Normal" driven pheasant and partridge do indeed offer good sport--at least for the vast majority of shooters.
About 99% of all the 12 gauge guns made in the United States until 1950 would be perfect high pheasant guns. Of course, the gun writers have to earn a living.
Eight bore is correct. Nothing about the barrels orientation makes one gun more suitable than another for high long targets. Muzzle weight and stock shape yes. Clays are not birds but we shoot two high towers often never saw any hit advantage to a particular type of gun. Plenty of American SxS guns handle just like modern OU clays guns.
Reason you don't often see them in clays competition is fixed tight chokes. Most sporting courses are best shot with IC. Go long and high lots of Parker Smith Fox guns do very well
Boats
I think the point is not whether they are SxS or O/U, but that they have the barrel configuration (length, chamber, choke) to handle the larger loads of powder and shot, to achieve the killing distances we are talking about.
My guns are SxS, English, 2 1/2" chambers. I wouldn't want to put anything more than 32g of No 5 shot through them. That's more than enough for the type of driven shooting I am fortunate enough to do.
So if I go on my mythical high bird day, I'd have to get a MK38 with 30" + barrels, 2 3/4" chambers and a lot of practice! Clearly, these days, most modern guns that can take those loads tend to be O/U; laws of supply and demand.
Tim
Eight Bore is correct about the pre-50's American guns. I never have, nor will, hunt driven high pheasants until I win Powerball but had a close approximation in the late '50's and early '60's. Born and raised in S.D. in the heydays of pheasants, I'd occasionally whine enough to "block ends", teenagers seldom got the privilege. I was shooting a Meriden,circa 1910, with 1 1/4 oz. of 6's. Some of those roosters, especially sped up by a couple misses, would rocket over 40-50 yards overhead. Piece of cake! My uncle, crippled up with heart disease, usually got the choice blocking spots. Shooting a Fox 16 ga. he seldom missed those shots.
Typical driven pheasant I shoot, nothing below 20 yards tends to get shot at unless its a pricked bird. Your bred and butter birds are coming at 30 yards high and you might get a few get up a bit more each drive coming over at 45 yards 50 being about as good as you get. The shoot I went on where I found the birds high your bread and butter birds were 40 yards with the real high flyers getting up to 60 yards when the wind was favorable or they were driven off high ground. You man in the film is selectively choosing birds that look to be getting on 70 - 80 possibly more. What we might normal call a high bird 40 - 50 yards, is very different to the birds this man is shooting at.
Tim posted
I understand that the day after a high bird shoot, the keepers are out again with their dogs to 'hoover up' the birds that were either missed or died later under some cover, often many hundreds of yards behind the gun line.
Tim, that does happen, but not just on "high bird" drives. On any shooting day there will be a team of pickers up each with multiple dogs who will be active well behind the line looking for winged birds and runners, and someone will be out the following day too. The keepers wouldn't usually make it a special job, just take close care as they are doing the normal rounds.
The numbers found on the day following, relative to the overall bag isn't in my experience a function of the quality of the shooting team, so much as the efficiency of the pickers up on the day of the shoot.
I used to organise the pickers up on several shoots, some of them the "high bird" variety and I'd take a wise old dog with me on the day following to look for the cripples precisely with the objective of seeing how well or poorly we'd done the day before. My impression was that if we'd done our job properly there were no more pricked birds from a "normal" day than on a high bird one.
It's quite rare to find a dead bird on these occasions; if you do it's usually under a tree where it's perched for a while and then expired.
Also interesting is the examination of those old cock birds that are shot by use of a .22 after the season proper closes. I dressed out twenty such off a really high bird Welsh shoot about ten days ago and found just one shotgun pellet; there might have been a couple more but all these birds were fine big fellows in prime nick. So the residual stock having been shot at for five months don't show a high incidence of non - fatal wounding.
Personally I find the high bird mania a bit distasteful (and big numbers too) but I suspect this is an old fashioned and uncommercial view.
Three old dogs, two with wisdom!
Eug
Very thoughtful and informative post, eugene. Interesting that your actual experience picking up after driven shoots does not bear out the much repeated mantra about "long shooting" wounding birds excessively. Having never shot driven pheasant I cannot speak directly concerning them. However, having done more than a little long and high shooting with shotguns I can say that I have noticed that those who have never taken the time and put forth the effort to learn how to do so are most often the quickest to disparage it. I certainly do not put you in that group, eugene. But, there are plenty here for whom that "shoe" should be a comfortable fit.
SRH
I have an issue with shooting magazines promoting high pheasant shooting articles and intimating that anyone can do it.
We then get commercial shoots selling days to teams of guns with either none or very little experience of ever shooting at a pheasant at a greater range than 30 yards.
It isn't easy , so please, practice on high driven clays before venturing out onto a truly high pheasant day.Good instruction can be bought for the price of three dead pheasants, but is very rarely purchased before setting foot in the Field.
I increasingly find that many Guns, expectations,and ego's, far outstrips their ability.
A good tightly chocked pass shooting double like a Fox HE with the lighter frame would work if it was stocked a little high. Also Smith or Win 21. Actually there are/were probably more American guns made like this than English/European.
West Side in Houston has a 100 ft. tower that throws this type of target and they are a real challenge to hit. They are sort of like high speed asprin tablets at 40-50 yds.
A HE 12 (actually an 11 gauge, or overbored 12 if you like- Super Fox on a lighter frame? Say what- I owned one once, some 20 years ago- 32" F&F, DT, Ej. weighed about as much as a loaded M-1 Garand- Now I use a 1929 era 12 Specialty grade Smith- 32" Imp. Mod & F, DT, Ej, std R size frame factory ventilated rib- std. field stock dims (for me) to a solid red pad- No trap shooting dims- for tower birds at our area hunt club- at 8 lbs. even, waaay easier to handle-
I have an issue with shooting magazines promoting high pheasant shooting articles and intimating that anyone can do it.
That's why I liked the Venters and Batha articles in SSM. They made it clear that high bird shooting is a specialty game, requiring a special gun with tighter chokes and shooting heavier loads than on a typical driven bird day (as described above by various people who've shot driven birds). In my own case, I've seen the occasional drive on a "typical" driven shoot--pretty much as described above, with "bread and butter" birds in the 20-30 yard range, taller ones around 40--where there are very few below 40 yards. And not very many birds are killed on those drives. I remember one drive last year where that was the case. And another from a couple years ago, when I was next in line to the best shot in the group. Instead of coming at us on that drive, most of the birds were coming from our right, and I was on the far left end of the line. My companion was missing a few, hitting a few--and they were taller by the time they were over me than over him. After missing about 7 or 8 in a row, I realized they were beyond my capability, after which all I did was watch the guy next to me, and admire his skill. But he also shoots 50-60 driven days a season, which does help.
Blocking on pheasant drives in the US doesn't compare very well to driven shooting. Certainly not really high bird driven shooting. Our pheasant country is relatively flat. In the UK, you don't get really tall birds unless they're coming off the tops of hills (and often over the tops of trees) and the guns are down in a valley. We tend to overestimate the range of pheasants coming at us with some elevation, because that's not the way we usually see pheasants. A rooster that's 25 yards up will clear the top of a 60 foot tree with quite a bit to spare--and that's a fairly tall tree. Birds 30-35 yards up can look REALLY high, because we Yanks seldom see them presented that way. We're used to judging horizontal distance on pheasants, not vertical.
There are a couple problems with classic American 12's. One is that, unless you modify them, they're stocked too low for this kind of shooting. The other is that, especially on very tall birds coming at you, ANY sxs will blot out the bird. (The broader profile of a sxs is one reason an OU is preferred by most of the high bird specialists.) The tendency is to stop your swing when the barrels hide the bird, so you miss behind. It's not that the Brits don't have longer barreled, tighter choked, heavier sxs. Many were built for waterfowl or pigeon shooting, and aren't that different from our classic sxs (although they're much more likely to be stocked higher than ours). And sxs certainly work well enough on "typical" driven birds, although more and more Brits are shooting OU's simply because they come to driven shooting after having started on clays, and an OU is the gun with which they're familiar.
The first time I shot driven birds, one of our "guns" was Roger Mitchell, then managing director of H&H, and pretty well-experienced at driven game. I asked him what was considered a good average on driven birds. He told me that on proper, sporting birds, 1 for 3 was a respectable average. I thought that seemed pretty low. Having done it several times now, I'm pretty much in agreement. I usually shoot 3 driven days when I go, and I have had rare days where I've been over 50%, and begin to think that perhaps Lord Ripon's shade is nodding approvingly. That will be followed by a day when I have more challenging birds, or just plain aren't on my game, and I don't make the 1 in 3 standard. When all is said and done, if I can shoot around 40% total for the trip, I'm satisfied. I keep hoping I'll make 50% one of these years, but if I did, I might be asking myself whether I took too many of the easier (but still "sporting") chances and not enough of the harder ones.
To give an idea of chokes for "typical" driven birds: an American friend, who's done a lot more driven shooting than I have, has a pair of McKay-Brown OU's. He sought out David's advice on choking: .010 in both barrels. I seem to recall that at least some of Ripon's guns had no choke. I want at least some, but an honest IC pushing an ounce or 1 1/16 of Brit 6's (270/oz) should put 140+ pellets in a 30" circle at 40 yards. And with that being a "tall" bird on a typical shoot, fairly open chokes seem to make a lot of sense.
The weakest team on a driven day that I picked up on averaged one bird in the bag for each eighteen shots.
Given that figure you'd expect to see a larger than average proportion of pricked birds, but I didn't notice anything much different. Until someone comes up with some valid figures, a lot of the comments on wounded / kill ratio are just guesswork.
There is another "fad" amongst some Guns for using 28 bores on drives where high birds are present. That does lead to an increase in wounding. I picked 23 birds from behind one such team, and 15 were runners .... I stayed behind after the drive was over and really searched all the cover for about 45 minutes with three Labs before I judged I'd got all I was going to.
That was one of the occasions that pissed me off with the direction that driven shooting is taking.
Eug
I have been watching his videos for the past year and they are fantastic. This past issue of Fieldsport Magazine has an article on High Bird shooting and tells the guns and cartridges they use.
There is also other articles in there, one by Chris Batha and one by Simon Ward talking about cartridges and other stuff about high bird shooting.
The article I mentioned listed some of the guns and cartridges they shot at this one particular shoot. All shot over and unders. A couple shot 20 bores, a Perazzi and a Watson Brothers with 33" barrels.
Some makers now specialize in High Bird guns. I know McCay Brown makes one and even has his own brand of HB cartridges,
There is a chap that has a web site, HIGH PHEASANT EXTREME, that sells his own brand of Perazzi's for such shoots. He also has his own cartridges. He touts his Perazzi's because they have the reverse slope rib that makes you be able to see more of the bird. He recommends 32 - 34" barrel guns.
I have been watching these videos for over a year now, I try to watch the guys when they shoot and see how much recoil they are getting from the shells they are shooting. Dave Carrie in the video really has his shooting down and if you watch he passes on the low birds and only shoots the high and far birds.
One guy mentioned our American heavy side by sides we have here such as the Model 21. Would any of you Brits want to trade a Model 21 for a Purdey or Boss?
Just let me know.
Mike, I noticed that too. However, thinking about it I find myself picking out the higher, better flying birds when I'm shooting driven birds that are coming over in numbers.
The reason is that I am given the choice and prefer to test myself against the more sporting birds, provided they are in range for me and my gun. Most guns I know also select the birds they shoot at. The lower birds are considered less sporting and we clearly don't wish to ruin their eating by 'blasting' them, if you follow my meaning!
In Dave Carrie's case I guess he is being selective in the same way, just that his skill base is considerably greater than mine!
On the question of cartridge to kill ratios, I too have found on a normal driven bird shoot (bags of around 100 birds) 1:3 is usual. On one shoot we keep annual records and the average over the last ten years is just under that ratio.
Tim
So all the hoop-la over large kill numbers are for nothing since low birds are not normally taken. If the guys wanted to "kill" birds they would be shooting the low flying birds.
I find the "Driven" shooting an excellent challenge. I for one have not mastered that shot and I suppose it is because most of our shots are going away.
I wish we had more clay target ranges that threw the driven style targets.
I'm not surprised by the extensive use of Over/Unders for high Pheasant for two reasons. One is the torque that is a function of the SxS barrel arrangement. The gun tends to "twist" when fired. That would undoubtedly be exaggerated with the use of very heavy loads. Firing a few hundred of those over a day would certainly be tiresome, even with a heavier SxS. The O/U does away with this torque.
The second reason is wear and tear on the gun. English guns are marvels of the art with wonderful balance. But that comes at a price - durability. There is a reason why those wonderfully balanced and slim SxS barrels literally wear out with heavy shooting. Note all the "re-barreled" English shotguns on the market. How many "re-barreled" Parkers or Model 21s do you see. Add the heavy loads that they use for high Pheasant and the wear would be accelerated.
Mike, I don't think we should confuse the high bird discussion with one about large bags. That's two different topics, though that's not to say they don't happen at the same place on the same day.
Just to divert to the large bag issue, though. We probably first need to define what we mean by large bag. That is tricky though. For the shooting I am used to a 200 bird day would be as large as I like to go. Some shoots have the ground to lay on 300-500 bird days (those are large bags to my mind and compared to my experience) and to do so successfully, presenting challenging birds to capable guns. On the other hand, I know of one or two commercial shoots, laying on up to 6 days a week shooting, bags of 150-250 birds, where the birds don't fly especially well, where the guns, on the whole, don't know better and where the numbers killed are what counts toward a good day (and let me hasten to add I would not have anything to do with those shoots).
Related to this and harking back to the two videos I originally posted at the start of this thread, there were two guns on the partridge shoot who had little or no experience of shooting. Now I like to encourage folk to try shooting and take it up if they enjoy it, but I do have a problem with them learning at a high bird driven shoot. I felt 'uncomfortable' watching that. Surely better to get time in on the clays, then progress to some walking up over dogs around the margins informally, then a few smaller driven days, before testing oneself on a high bird day.
Sorry, I'm banging on; I'll go back into my corner now!
Tim
In fear of stating the obvious shooting a shotgun does not wear the barrels out. The main culprits for barrel demise is firstly poor maintenance not every owner cleans his gun after each days use. Secondly some of the more mature guns where used with black powder and the material used in the primers was as aggressive as black powder residue. Then there is the old enemy RUST!!!! Caused by the first three!!! But the largest cause of barrel wear is the gunsmith with his attempts to remove the rust and pitting by let’s just say reaming out the bore and in doing so making it larger.
Now here in Brit land as I am sure you know there are finite limits on bore size you just can’t ream out the bore to remove all traces of pitting go too far the gun is valueless and will require a re-proof with all the risk that entails to restore its value, but NOT on your side of the pond export it from here and its value returns and this happened a lot in the past. You can do more or less whatever it takes to end up with a mirror finish bore. And may be that puts in perspective why there are a lot of guns with oversized out of Brit proof bores on your side of the water that will command a high price but over here are just bad news to the owner. So let’s level the playing field if your ‘Parkers’ had to live over here with the same rules of proof a Maritime climate over the same time scale you would see a lot with new sets of barrels.
Though with correct and regular owner maintenance plus a trip now and again to a reputable gun smith, a lot of these finely balanced marvels of true English gun making are still in continuous use after some one hundred and fifty years and still comply with the Brit proof laws.
So in the end you folks are extremely lucky that soundness of a gun is what is correct in your opinion you do not have the government deciding it for you!!!!!!!
I have participated in "Tower Shoots" as invited for about 20 years. And am an avid pass shooter of snow geese.
I used 1.25oz Activ shells at first. 3 3/4 dr eq I think. On the highest birds. US #6 shot maximum.
After about 75 cartridges, the level of fatigue is just too much for me. The lifting, swinging, shooting, all just exhausts me. It's a pounding for sure.
I used a heavy weight Ithaca Flues 12 (32") w/ Sunburst pad, and like I said, after 75 max cartridges, I was spent. It wasn't any fun after about 50 cartridges truthfully.
At least when I'm on the flight line at Great Bend, and am shooting Snow's, I can use a gas assisted auto loader. I might shoot 50-60, 3" 1 3/8 oz cartridges in a morning, and still feel OK. But a full day of high birds with 32g loads in a standing breech gun would put me off the endeavor.
I don't like heavily shot up birds, so I don't mind dispatching returns. And if you are gunning tall birds, you're going to have some cripples. Not as many as you'd think though. The landings from 50 yards up are very accommodating.
I absolutely love these videos. Keeps me excited for when I head out for Snow's in a couple weeks.
Re the comment about American doubles, Jack O'Connor talks about shooting driven birds with a Model 21 in his "Shotgun Book", and being fairly successful. But that's long enough ago that we're not talking extremely high birds--which are a relatively recent phenomenon, given the century and a half or so history of driven shooting.
The shoots I've done have all been in the 200-300 bird range, mixed pheasant and partridge (most of the time favoring the former). If I'm on a peg where I'm not seeing much action, I may take a "low" bird or two that I would pass on if more birds were coming my way. "Low" by the way, must always mean "safe". The blue sky rule: Bird has to be surrounded by sky to make sure you're not going to pepper a beater. But, as noted earlier, you don't want to take too many low birds--even if they are safe and meet the low end of the "sporting" criteria--because you run up the cost of the shoot, which is based on birds bagged (or birds that should be bagged, if whomever runs the shoot feels that the guns are missing a lot of birds that are within their capabilities).
Agree with trw about inexperienced shots at high bird shoots. They're likely to be so frustrated that they won't try it again. And they'll end up paying for the privilege of missing almost everything they shoot at, and essentially subsidizing the bag taken by the skilled high bird shots.
On the subject of barrel wear, somewhere I recall reading of a noted gun scribe visiting the Birmingham Proof House.
He was shown one of the barrels used for proof testing. It was old and well used. Apparently, it still measured as intended; in other words it was not worn internally despite having many thousands of rounds through it. It may even have never been cleaned, but now I really am testing my brain cells!
Anyway, the point made was that is not the rounds fired through a barrel that wear it, it is the cleaning. This really rather surprised me. It didn't go into details but I assumed that using a phosphor bronze brush for cleaning is, in effect, an abrasive action and thus likely, over the years, to wear away at the inner surface. Now I'm the messenger here so don't shoot me (pun intended!) and, as I have indicated, this is stretching my memory - a lot!
I have to say that ever since I only ever clean my barrels with a phosphor bronze brush once, lightly, at the end of the season. All the rest of the time I use a nylon brush to get rid of the deposits, before then using a woolly. I also always clean my guns at the end of each days use.
Sorry, I' wittering on - again!
Tim
On the subject of barrel wear, somewhere I recall reading of a noted gun scribe visiting the Birmingham Proof House.
He was shown one of the barrels used for proof testing. It was old and well used. Apparently, it still measured as intended; in other words it was not worn internally despite having many thousands of rounds through it. It may even have never been cleaned, but now I really am testing my brain cells!
Anyway, the point made was that is not the rounds fired through a barrel that wear it, it is the cleaning. This really rather surprised me. It didn't go into details but I assumed that using a phosphor bronze brush for cleaning is, in effect, an abrasive action and thus likely, over the years, to wear away at the inner surface. Now I'm the messenger here so don't shoot me (pun intended!) and, as I have indicated, this is stretching my memory - a lot!
I have to say that ever since I only ever clean my barrels with a phosphor bronze brush once, lightly, at the end of the season. All the rest of the time I use a nylon brush to get rid of the deposits, before then using a woolly. I also always clean my guns at the end of each days use.
Sorry, I' wittering on - again!
Tim
Hardened and machine nickel alloy gun barrel steel bearing "worn" on the barrel ID by a non-ferrous bronze brush- Strange indeed-??
Had speaker issues with the computer. Finally got around to watching both videos. He was definitely picking high ones! The partridge in particular looked very high, but they always look higher and faster than they are compared to pheasants, because they're so much smaller. Looked like there were more "typical" birds on the second video (pheasants), but again, that may have been due their size vs partridge. But Dave was passing on birds I would've shot, and shooting at a lot of birds I probably would have passed on as being beyond my ability. Well-done videos.
My impression was that if we'd done our job properly there were no more pricked birds from a "normal" day than on a high bird one.
I think possibly the reason that folks are not seeing more pricked birds on the high bird shoots is because they're not being missed due to thinning patterns or reduced pellet energy. Likely, they're being missed by a ton at that range. Doesn't matter how much shot you put behind them. On lower birds I think there's a much higher chance of clipping a bird with the edge of the pattern if you're a bit off. If you're a bit off at a 60 yard bird you're well off, likely won't clip a tail feather, all of your mistakes are that much more magnified at range.
I've found the longest birds I've killed have been lights out, everything came together perfectly, otherwise it was as if I was shooting blanks.