Hi all, just was kind of wondering are you the only one in your group of hunting partners/friends who carries a Side by Side?
If so, what kind of kidding and ribbing do you all get (both fun and not so fun)?
For me, I'm the only one. Everyone else carries a pump or auto. Even one of my sons is a pump guy (he's only 11, so I have time to work on him). Here's some of the things my pals say (all in fun BTW):
"You hunt with that old gun"
"Kind of a snob with that high class gun"
"You can't kill anything with 2 1/2" shells and 1 oz of shot"
"You need to shoot 3"mags with 1 7/8oz of 4's"
"A 16ga!!!"
"My $200 pump will kill them as dead as your $3000 gun"
These are just a few...what about you?
All the best!!
Greg
Just turn up with a hammer gun with non-reboundng locks and loose off black powder all day at a driven pheasant shoot!
Yes, I am usually the only one.
I hunt my place only - so I see nuthin'.
...but if there were not sales of autos n' pumps...not a shotgun would be sold.
Lowell now you know you do all your hunting with a .22....
I remember about 6-7 yrs. ago I showed up with my one Baker and they snickered. The game fell from the sky just as well as the auto's and pumps. Then the next year I showed up with my ml'ing SxS and they snickered, and the game fell just as well as before. Then in 2005 I showed up with my old 20ga. SxS flinter. No one snickers, they think it is neat to be hunting with a guy that likes to shoot old guns. I am not handicapped at all shooting the guns of my choice.
My buddy and I do not do much hunting but you should see the looks we get on the Trap range with our antique side by sides.We usually score higher than the ones shooting the high dollar trap guns. The old full chokes work great for Trap.
I usually shoot a LC Smith field grade and he shoots a Parker,yesterday he had a Remington hammer gun and I was using an AJ Aubrey,both damascus,we really got the stares.
We just shoot for fun and the SxS's are the most fun.
I join friends in North Dakota every October to hunt ducks and geese from layout blinds in fields. My trusty BSS and Merkel 8 have bagged our share of waterfowl after doing a hasty sit-up in the blind. My friends could never understand why I'd leave a Benelli autoloader in the truck (backup gun) and limit myself to only 2 shots.
Things sometimes do change... A couple months ago my ND friend called asking advice on selecting a SxS. This will be a 20ga for upland birds but once bitten... I give him another season or 2 and he'll have a 12ga SxS in his layuot blind!
I hunt regularly with my brother-in-law, who bouces around between one of a couple 20g sxs guns or O/U and auto guns.
Last year, I started hunting with a fella I knew from the local range. He shoots mostly a CSM 21 .410 or now also a CSM Fox .410 for all upland.
I also have an old friend that now shoots a RBL 20g and a Win 23 12g that hunts in SD with me.
And last yr in SD, I got Builder (Milt) to come over to SD and hunt with us. He brought a new (to him) modern hammergun. I hope to see him back this yr.
But sxs hunters are few and far between.
One guy I have shot with calls my SxS guns Elmir Fudd guns and why would I want to shoot a cartoon gun. Once in awhile I beat him on the SC course and I get my revenge.
Regards, Gordon
The club where I shoot clays has a bunch of us s/s guys (Eight Bore, Jeff Mull, Kevin & Burt are all regular suspects. To be odd there I need to shoot my Darne. Its a great club,I can even scrounge 16 ga hulls out of the trash.
My hunting guns are all s/s too either a 10 ga NID mag or a Bayard 12 ga hammer gun for ducks. I have been fighting with the idea of retiring my bad weather Remington 1100 Mag and messing up a really nice condition BSS 3" mag 30" barrel gun as an all weather duck gun. I just dont like shooting autos and cant remember to pump
Gordon,
Does your friend look like this?
My shooting student Joe Wood uses old doubles when we go bird hunting. Sometimes he uses a an old English Singlshot hammergun. Usually mumbles about Rocketman and "low moment of inertia" after he misses. Hunted with Daryl a couple of days and he carried a nifty English 20gauge double hammergun.
Best,
Mike
I was invited to shoot at Chatsworth.Turned up with my B25.
The Duke tartly remarked he would have preferred me to shoot 'a proper gun'.Bought a SxS the following week, shot a right and left at Woodcock a few weeks later.
Just turn up with a hammer gun with non-reboundng locks and loose off black powder all day at a driven pheasant shoot!
Yes, I am usually the only one.
Make sure the gun has a Jones underlever too! That usually freaks'em out...
I know that feeling! My shooting partner and I are known around the local clubs as the guys who shoot black powder... But not tonight, JM...
I have a few friends who use sxs, and because we tend to have similar ideas about our guns and shooting we do a bit of shooting together. I tend to do most of my range shooting at Vintagers events, and supply the ground over which my friends shoot, so sxs is right and proper in my company!; I am also though made thoroughly aware that I am different in a mainstream context (to the point of having one wanker offer to ditch my Woodward in a creek so I could trade it in for a "real" gun. I suggested to him that the man who oversaw a talented group of skilled artisans who lovingly hand built my sxs to order 100+ years ago actually invented his mass produced O/U gun. I don't think he was smart enough to get the joke, but a few around him did...)
RG
That's right j0e, and I'm going to do more of it!
Just think j0e, when they close the ice box(next to the old sofa) for the day that sits on your club's front porch - I'll still be at it and you'll have to go home.
Chuck
That's funny. I am going to print that one and lay it on him Saturday. It will be my first time out in over a month. I had prostate surgery and my Doc finally released me to work so I am thinking that I can shoot as well. Thanks agian you brightened my day.
Regards, Gordon
I'm a member of a small club, perhaps 40 members, working class guys, some professionals. We have land in the Hudson Valley we lease and maybe half of the members actually shoot birds ( released pheasants).
Out of that 20 I'd say about 12 are SxS guys, 5 O/U's and a couple of pumps and autos.
I feel at home, though in 2006 I used my Rem. M17 a lot.
It depends on what group of friends I'm shooting with. If I'm out with friends from the PGCA then everybody has a side by side. If I'm out with my regular crew of rednecks then I'm the only one.
When I first started going over to Canada all the boys called me Elmer Fudd behind my back because of my double barrels and my Jones Style Cap. I didn't really care, I have more fun at it than they do with their Benelli's and camo ballcaps.
I've gotten some odd reactions at the trap range. I've got a Parker DHE trap model and I've had lots of guys tell me how that gun was really worth a lot of money and I shouldn't shoot it. I just tell them I know it's worth something but guns are made to shoot so I do.
Then there was the guy the last time I went pheasant hunting at the preserve who was gonna be real fair with me and make an offer to buy that old double barrel I had. He very graciously offered me $500 for my Parker BH and I just as graciously passed. I guess he figured anybody in bib overalls and a Jones Cap couldn't have any idea what a gun was really worth. I laughed about that all the way home.
Destry
I hunt with Foxes. My usual partner shoots Parkers. I allow him to accompany me even though he shoots an inferior gun!!! My other bird bud shoots an O/U Beretta. I am trying to lure him into the fold but no success so far. He cant let go of his modern guns.
I went through the Single shot, pump, auto , O/U phases and have used Fox doubles 99% of the time since the mid 90's. I have never looked back.
Of course I get the " what did that cost you? I wouldnt take a gun that fancy or expensive hunting."
My response is " If you were married to Katherine Zetta Jones or Kim Bassinger, would you stand them in a corner and just look at them or would you enjoy them? They get the message.
Club in Jersey. Hundreds of members but many are family memberships interested in the lake and beach. Take a horizontal to trap or skeet and eventually more come out of the closet. We are perhaps not so stranded in modernity as we sometimes think. So far I'm the only one shooting skeet with bp in damascus (by myself). And I shoot my Flues 4e SBT occasionally for trap but not often. This Sunday at the LDS (latter day skeet) church I'll be trying out my new old "twin-single" Super. I took delivery tonite; absolutely beautiful; what a Browning Super was meant to be. I put some old Cheddite 157 primers (they fall out of the primer well of my hulls) in some hulls and tried the triggers/pins. Pull-bump-pull 12 times; 12 ignitions. Lovely! Skeet out and in; skeet in and out. Won't that be fun? I'll hold it sideways for sta 8 or something.
jack
Two of my regular hunting buddies shoot a SXS. I am usually the aggresor when it comes to commenting on the unmanly automatics but only when I am in a crowd that I know well.
This year I hunted with my brother and about 30 of his friends in Ok for pheasants. I had been practicing old fashioned skeet(low gun not calling for the bird) Luckily, I did not miss a bird that flushed near me. Nobody said anything about my gun but after the first day most of them started looking at it and asking questions. I know for a fact that one has obtained a BSS and would not be surprised to see others there on the next trip.
I was using a AyA #117 with a stock lengthened and bent to my measurments.
When people ask me what kind of gun I hunt with I tell them I use a Model 21 as my beater. Then they feel a little embarrassed when I pull out my 21 with the 32" barrels and beat them at trap. Gives a guy a good feeling.
Of course, I usually beat them with my Ljutic, too. We all have names for our trap guns. I call mine "Denny Crane". Because of the Mad Cow, of course.
I usually hunt and fly fish with one other person and he and I always hunt with only a sxs..and only fly fish bamboo, snobs? No, both are my passion and I like the feel of "nostalgia".
Since one of my longtime hunting buddies uses nothing but a Mossberg 20 ga bolt gun, I have given up judging people by their things, gun, car, dog, house, other. I started shooting doubles because I lived in a place where it was a great advantage to have a "small bird" load with open choke in one barrel and a great honking load of 4s behind a tight choke in the other (I found that 1 1/8 oz. of hard 7 1/2s in an IC first barrel would kill a close pheasant fine but not a long one, or a passing mallard, or a coyote). For me, a double seemed, and seems, the most practical, and once I got used to two barrels and two triggers, I just couldn't work a pump well anymore. I still like pumps, but can't make them function to their best potential. I never warmed to automatics--shotgun, pistol, or automobile.
The guys I hunt with use all kinds of guns, some high dollar classic SXSs and Euro/Jap O/Us. Some stick with gasguns and pumps, mainly Model 12s (and 870s for "rain guns"), some switch between magazine guns and doubles. The one thing that I've noticed is that, speaking very generally, "gun nuts" like me that switch a lot are not consistently as good game shots as the guy who sticks to one format and one or two guns.
My friends pick on my shooting, not my shooter.
Makes me a little nervous when I'm around guys with autos or pumps. I love to see a double.....O/U or SxS.....broken open. Much more comforting than an open bolt!
Most guys I hunt and shoot with use doubles but they are mostly O/U's. There seems to be a slow and subtle transition going on though......more SxS's showing up every year.
SxS's are pretty much common and accepted in the groups I shoot and hunt with though there is plenty of diversity as well with other types of guns in use. There is no derision for anyone's choice of guns, something I can be keenly thankful for on ocassion, rather encouragement to enjoy the moment, the companionship or the event, when that is the case.
Bob's comment is well taken, but there is never a valid excuse for lack of gun safety and that is irrespective of the type of firearm or the game at hand. Still, one must be attentive, always, to as much as possible around them when hunting or shooting. We are all probably aware of some real horrors that never should have happened, but they did.
Markethunter's experiences and style make me smile. Thank you, Destry.
I just like to shoot and be afield when I can and I enjoy others enjoying the same interests and having some degree of passion about it. There is much to be enjoyed, learned and hopefully passed along. SxS's are & should be a part of that.
Last comment I heard was from a seventeen year old who said "Nice gun" about my brother's LC Smith!! His older brother, who just returned from Irag, God bless his soul, smiled and nodded his head in agreement.
My brother handed it to his older brother and let him use it to hunt with for the rest of the day.
You don't even wanna know the reaction of the guys at the gun club the first time I brought out the big double 8 gauge. There was a group of 4-H kids shooting that day, I had a bunch of shells for it I'd just bought from Armbrust and let them all have a try if they wanted. What was really funny was that I think every one of them kept the hull from their shot.
I may have posted this before, but it's one of my favorites so I'll post it again. This was from another time at the same club when I had the 8 gauge. One of the members had his son out for some trap shooting with his little .410 double. I snapped this shot of him holding them both:
Destry
My hunting buddy shoots a 311. My younger buddies shoot 870s. No one has ever said or suggested that my doubles were too good to take duck hunting, as valued and well-looked-after as they are.
What's peculiar to me is many hunters who could afford any gun going and don't value their guns as members do here. They're just tools. One lit his pipe by scratching his match on the checkering of his gun.
(Destry dresses as a hick but his bright black eyes and powerful powers of observation quickly give him away. He didn't fool me.)