doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Are You The Only One?

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.