[quote=Stan]
"Notice that the English guns that were mentioned by Roy are, for the most part, guns designed to handle heavier loads. There is a good reason for this, not lost on the British. Heavy recoil is much harder to handle with a straight grip. Those who espouse straight grips for all S X S guns are ignorant of this fact. Ignorance is simply lack of knowledge. Anyone who has tried using heavy pigeon or duck/goose loads in a straight gripped gun soon learns that it is impossible for the average man to recover from the recoil of the first shot and get the second barrel on target as well as he should be able to. Pistol grips allow much more control during recoil, and the second shot is able to be brought to bear with much less effort."
Some valid points here by Stan. I could be happy with an open style pistol grip or better yet a Woodward style POW on all of my SxS guns. Another point not mentioned here is that an open pistol grip tends to bring the gun up to the face during the mounting process better than an English style grip.
As to the beaveartail forends, I don't care for them but I can see some utility in them on a small bore gun for those with big hands.
Interestingly enough, Robert Churchill had good things to say about beavertail forends in his book "Game Shooting". One of the better books written on the subject regardless of if you buy into his shooting technique or not.
