doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Something for all you Old-timers

I had some guests over for a dove shoot on the home place once, many years ago. I had previously loaded up some b.p. in Federal paper 12 ga. hulls, a full box. One of the guests had not brought any shells and asked to borrow some. I inadvertently handed him the box of the b.p. loaded ones. He was shooting an A5. They functioned pretty well, as I recall, maybe beginning to jam towards the last few in the box. The guy's Dad and I were longtime b.p. shooters, and laughed so hard, because his son never even noticed all the smoke from the shells! The old Browming had to have a thorough cleaning that evening.

That was a very good video and well worth watching. It tells me I need to shoot my BP cartridge guns a lot more than I have been.
Thanks!

Well as an old timer I did enjoy the video up until the point when they used playing cards for peg position selection. Playing cards on the sporting field would be enough to get you cashiered in days gone by. Just thought I would photograph my 100 plus year old set that was made and in regular use at a large Norfolk estate all neatly contained in a 8 bore cartridge case. I am only lucky enough to own them because I was given them by a good friend ex Game keeper and poacher who is now keeping the foxes down on Gods estate. Just between ourselves he was the one who made a good poacher out of me in my younger days.
All the number tokens are made of brass and once where silver plated (I may re instate the plating sometime in the future) You can tell it is an estate peg selector by the the odd token. Just to add a bit of interest does any body have an Idea what part of the year the "X" was used for and why?






I did forgot to say that one gun I am sure was using Pyrodex rather than Black Powder.

Why would using playing cards for peg sélection get you cashiered?

Never used a tube on a duck pass or in a boat where I used a homemade 'floater' rather than risk losing the original ramrod. My big problem with percussion muzzleloaders was learning how to reload while standing in water.

Eeb I think many people could come up with an answer to your question. Lets set the scene driven shooting was the sport of the Aristocracy and the very rich and those people had many strange rules of what not to do and how to act. So I will start with a pack of playing cards to some people a pack of cards are known as the Devils Bible bringers of bad luck, bringing a pack of cards into a room can mean luck goes out of the window. Like putting shoes on a table was not a good thing to do bringing bad luck and death. The worst of these upper class idiosyncrasies was regarding Lord Cardigan famous for the charge of the Light Brigade at Crimea, and also for "THE Black Bottle" incident, for reasons he was brought up with you should not have a black bottle on a dinner table this act by someone caused a very large out of proportion incident. And finally shooting with black powder is called by some "as chasing the Devils coat tails" that is the way things are and the world would be a far duller place without this type of thing. These are just a few that come to mind though there are many more.

All I know about the habits of aristocratic Englishmen comes from Downton Abbey. The issue of playing cards for drawing shooting stands does not seem to have come up...Geo

Interesting take on a simple deck of playing cards. Nothing inherently evil about them, just as there's nothing evil about a gun ............ how an object is used often determines it's worth. Each time I hear of those who disparage a deck of playing cards I remember this song, which I first heard listening to the radio, probably the Grand Ole Opry, as a child.

Thanks for an interesting insight into those upper crust idiosyncrasies. My grandmother detested playing cards, especially on Sundays. She was a hard-shell Presbyterian mountain lady and when she was visiting when my sisters and I were kids my mother would hide the cards from us. She must have had kinfolk who got into debt with cards. I dunno. I’ll Google The BlackBotgle incident. Merry Christmas.

and then there are the jokers...