doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Western vs. eastern

A hunting buddy acquired a 16 GA Parker on and O frame and used it as a walking stick and he also held down barbed wire with the gun. He sold it to another friend and the gun has been restored to its original new condition.

I bought a nice little English .410 hammer gun with three distinct grooves running diagonal through the forend. I guessed a held down fence. I had a new wood made and fitted. I hate barbed wire anyway as it's often put where it isn't even needed. That's why my dogs are taught to stop at wire until I either lift them over or raise the wire. Lagopus.....

Even though one area I hunt has no barbed wire fencing, the area is used for military training, and occasionally concertina (razor) wire has been left behind, in place. Nasty stuff.

I had one dog that would run through barbed wire fences like they weren't there. Tough shorthair [censored], never got cut. Seemed like her big male pup would start bleeding if he got within 5 feet of barbed wire.

Ummhhh. A picture of that stuff will cut you worse than new barbed wire.

SRH

About 25 years ago, a recently married buddy and I went groundhog hunting and he borrowed his new father-in-law's brand new varmint rifle to try it out. We had just crossed an electric fence and were about 5 yards into a pasture that we were crossing to get to the next clover field. There was a large herd of cows resting in the shade of a big tree about 60 yards away, chewing their cuds.

Now those cows, as if on cue, all got up simultaneously to have a look at us. My buddy must have thought they were going to charge us or something because he turned and beat feet to get out of the pasture. I stood there and watched the show as he hit the electric fence, screamed like a girl, and literally launched his father-in-laws new gun about 10 yards into the adjoining field. It landed right on a rock on the top scope turret and crushed the scope. Fortunately, the new Leupold scope took virtually all of the damage. Unfortunately he was to return the gun that evening so that his new father-in-law could use it the next day. So there was no way to simply replace the scope and rings, sight it in, and act like it never happened. I can still see his father-in-law chewing him out and chiding him for running from a bunch of dairy cows.

Out west where the moose run free they step over the fence and break the top wire. Some farmers now put an electric fence on the top rung only so the moose stop breaking the fence. I was hunting one day and a cow moose saw me, ran up to the fence then started running up and down it quite frantically. Finally she found a spot to crawl underneath the fence. Haven't seen anything quite so commical since.

Other than the electric fence around the 10 acre piece I previously mentioned, we had barbed wire around the remaining 150 or so acres.

Guess who was tasked with the yearly (or as often as needed) repair of the fence.....my older brother and I. One year someone had purchased a bison in, I think Montana and was transporting it past our place when it broke out of trailer it was being hauled in. It went through our barbed wire fence like it wasn't even there and eventually continued across our property onto some adjoining property. I wanted to shoot the damn thing after it did that. Of course my brother and I tried to talk my dad into shooting it when he wouldn't let us do so, to no avail!

Just a quick historic note: Barbed wire was developed for the western United States, not for the east where wood for fencing was plentiful. See: THE WIRE THAT FENCED THE WEST, by Henry D. and Frances McCallum, University of Oklahoma Press, 1985.

J.K.B. von Falkenhorst

All this Barbed Wire talk begs the next question: How, or what is, the best way to repair this type of damage?