doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Slightly unusual Merkel "bockbuchsflinte"

An on-line friend - introducing Mikhail Kretchmar, a hunter, traveller, writer, big-game guide and gun nut - discovered it in Vladivostok and posted pictures at Russian gun community.

Looks like a pre-WW1 Merkel combination gun. The top barrel is 16-gause smoothbore. The bottom barrel used to be .577 BPE, originally, but later converted to 28-gauge Paradox: the grooves were drilled out in most of the barrel to make it a "shotgun" under the USSR/Russian gun legislation; and there's an insert in the chamber to use 28-gauge brass shells. The original cartridge seems to have equal to 24-bore brass shell dimensions at the rim. Now let's see if I can insert some pics...

... oops, something doesn't work (must be the java script disfunction). Anyway, you can see the pics here: http://community.livejournal.com/ru_guns/665103.html?view=8658447#t8658447 Sorry about the inconvenience.

Two things that don't look common in this gun:

First, the top fastener - it looks like a Koersten, but, yet, it doesn't look like the Koersten we know from the later Merkel O/Us. What is it? This question comes from Mr. Kretchmar.

Second, the choice of the rifle barrel - a .577 BPE doesn't seem the German gunmaker's top choice, and a combination of "ultramodern" O/U design and "obsolete" black-powder cartridge somehow don't fit. This is my question.

So - what are your most welcome opinions about this gun?

P.S. sorry about possible misspellings.

577 BPE can't be converted to 28G Paradox to shoot slugs.
Let me guess 28G chamber insert been made for common 28G bird shot ammo, when 24G ammo and shells are extremely rare stuff today.

More, I got pre-WW-I Sauer&Sohn hammer double rifle in 577BPE and it was very popular caliber among bear shooters, though Prince Shirinsky-Shihmatov wrote calibers over .500BPE were too strong for bear and destroy bear skull too much.

I have seen similar bolted Schullers, one even more complex, a fella up in Montana had that one last I heard of it. I think there must have been a lot of concern with the big bores about the possibilty of loosening from heavy recoil rounds and considering the steels were not always the best in earlier times perhaps there was some validity to the concern, so locks were designed to insure the gun remained tight & on face, regardless. On the recoil issue, one can look at some Rigbys and others that had long tangs & reinforced wrists as some further proof of the concern.

As to the choice of calibre, it may have been that the original owner had some previous fondness for the round or had a lot of them on hand already .. or he could have been Elmer Keith's Russian cousin;-) Guessing .. of course guessing can easily lead to being very wrong. Boars & buffs, the latter Polish.

edit: I should have thought of bears! Its Russia!

The point is: if the gun was ordered by a Russian before 1914 (that's my guess), then the choice of .577 is perfectly understandable. Russian shots liked .577, it's well known.

But if the gun was brought over after WW2, then it was likely ordered by a German, and the choice of .577 for a German gun made for a German hunter doesn't seem very likely - Or am I simply ignorant?

My present DR been brought here by WW-II soldier from Germany.
Most of old Russian bear guns been destroyed or simply are still in the ground.

Caliber .577 (24g rifle) was very popular in Central Europe. An Austrian gun catalog c.1885 shows most combination guns chambered in 24g or 28g for the rifle barrel (shotgun barrel was as a rule 16g). Later on this changed of course but some big game hunters prefered .577 over "small bores" for a long time. Also let us not forget that a good part of German gun production was intended for Africa.

Regards
Jani

O.K., thanks everyone, the caliber thing is settled.

Now what about the Koersten/notKoersten lockup?

I don't see anything unusual about it's fastening system. In fact my 1956 vintage 201e seems identical to it in this manner.

I do not think that's a pre WWI gun. It looks more like a WWII era design, either just before WWII or even just after WWII. The lock-up is the typical Kersten lock-up of those era guns. I have three like it, two from the late 1930's and one 1970's era Luxus grade Merkel.