doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com What Do People Say To You When You Use A SxS?

Just about everyone knows all I shoot are SxSs, except pumpgun Fridays at our club. Been doing it for longer than I can remember seeing how a SxS was my first shotgun. Over the years shooting trap I've used a 870, Browning BT-99, and a Parker SBT, but now I'm back to my Remington 1894s F grade trap models. I've got three of them, so there's no need to shoot anything else. I don't hunt any more, just shoot clay birds, and I find it much more enjoyable to use a old Damascus barrel SxS than some new gun anyone can buy and shoot. There's something about shooting a hundred year old gun that's been around. If only they could talk back to me. I just wonder where they've been and what they've done.

I simply explain that I shoot SxS's because that's how my eyes are oriented!
Karl

"That thing is going to blow up!" Later I walk out of the woods with a turkey and a greener from the 1870's. Gotta love RST!

Many years ago I took my middle son to the boot in Missouri for his first duck hunt. I took a Lefever HE that I was fond of shooting at the time. The guide gave me grief for bringing such a outdated gun. In two day I killed nine ducks with 12 shots. Two were very decent shots but the rest were gimmes as far as I was concerned. By the end of the second day the guide had shut up about the outdated double. Another hunter not with us had shot almost two full boxes of shells and as far as I could tell had not scratched a single feather. He did have a nice looking modern semi automatic in the proper black plastic finish. Shooters like that make a guides day very long and tend to be lousy tippers.

I often get something like �Well you don�t care much about score do you?�

Later I hear �Jeez I didn�t think you could do that with a SXS...�

My first duck hunt in AR was a freebie, paid for by a seed company I did business with. I'd never shot steel in my life. I took a 26" barreled BSS choked IC and M. When we loaded up in the back of a pickup that first morning at the Hartz
Seed Co. lodge outside of Stuttgart I was the only one out of six not carrying a SBE or a long barreled O/U. One guy looked at my little double and said "You going to use that?

Six of us in the blind, I thought, as we waited for shooting light. How am I going to know if I actually killed a duck with 5 others shooting? I figured that only if I beat them to the draw would I know for sure. I decided to not shoot on the first flight that came in, so that I could observe how they came in, how things went in general. They blasted away at them killed two to three, and looked around at me still sitting down. "Why didn't you shoot?", they said. I answered that I thought there would be plenty more chances. I noticed that they came in from my end of the blind, and hoped the next bunch would. They did. I had my feet set properly to stand and take one short step while mounting my gun, my trigger finger alongside the trigger guard and my thumb on the safety. At the guides' call to "Kill 'em!" I jumped to my feet, dishragged a drake, then killed closest duck to him. I had two dead ducks in the air before anybody else got off a shot. The rest of the morning went like that. Nobody said another word about my little gun.

SRH

My son met a girl in college that he wanted to visit in the summer. She lived in a rural area and her dad and brothers liked to hand throw a few clays behind the barn in the evening. He asked to take a gun and plenty of shells to have some fun.

I of course had no problem whatsoever and told him to help himself with whatever he needed. Lo and behold he took a 12 Gauge Ansley Fox XE SXS with 30 inch barrels and in his words made diesel smoke with her brothers and dad. His future mother in law laughs now that she thinks her husband had a bigger man crush on my son than his daughter did at the time.

When shooting clays or out hunting, other shooters will often compliment me on my Parkers. No one has ever been rude or a "wise ass".

I mostly get polite curiosity until they get a close up look at one of my guns. Then they typically want a much closer look at it.

Not a double story but to me pumps are almost a classic double to many. Last year I was invited to a very fancy Dove hunt. Took my Pigeon Grade 42. Host just about wet his pants when I pulled it out. After a few minutes I told him if he wanted to he could use that one and I would shoot another 42 High Grade I had with me.

He was like a kid at Christmas. Put his gun away and took a couple boxes of my shells. Told him I like pass shooting dove with the 42 and he had the perfect spot he said. We setup in a deep ravine with trees on one side, so the birds which flew over us were 30-40 yard shots. It was a lot of fun. He missed his first ten shots or so and walked over to me and asked what he was doing wrong. Stop measuring your lead and thinking about it I told him. Next two shots he killed the birds and he started chipping away at a limit. Almost had to pry the gun away from him when I wanted to go. His offer to buy it was close to my temptation price but I did not let him know that. I do have an invite back this year or maybe it was the 42 which got the invite.