doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com The pros and cons of light 12s

Here are two of my light 12ga guns. They are great to carry all day. I have no issues or handicap when shooting them.

I load 2 1/2" paper and plastic 1oz and 1 1/8oz shells @1200fps for them. I don't realize any excessive recoil with either.

First is a Charles Daly Featherweight with 26" barrels weighing 5# 9oz empty.





Here is my John Dickson round action from 1890 with 28" barrels. It weighs 6# even. I love hunting with this gun.




All of my 12ga field guns are 6#12oz or less.
My 16ga field guns are 5#7oz to 6#4oz.

duxsdog - Each gun nicer than the last, and a handsome dog to boot. Looks like you have it figured out.

A collection to drool over. His guns are all pretty amazing

My father in his late 70’s suffered a detachment issue after a day on the sporting clays range. It sidelined him for sometime. I cannot state with certainty the causal linkage, but there may be one. We humans are complex machines and like old watches sometimes more fragile when we age.

As for 6lb 12ga guns, years ago I had a O/U Italian gun which weighed 6 even. With light loads it was ok, but I failed to hold back and beat myself to death and gave up on it. Through life experience I have found 6 pound 16’s a pleasure and my preferred standard weight of gun. The key bottom line is to shoot the correct weight load for the gun you are using. For targets I adhere to the old rule of 96, 1oz for a 6 pound gun, and for hunting I sometimes stretch it to 1 1/8.

I have focused on 16’s for most of my hunting life and only recently gotten into 12ga 2 1/2 inch. I do not own any 6lb 12’s and have no plans to get one. When I want to be comfortable hunting I default to a 6lb gun. It is simply I am used to. If a 6lb 12 is your thing, then good on you and use it well.

How much shooting did your dad do after the detachment? Late 70s would impact the healing process, greatly. High blood pressure, diabetes, poor circulation, kidney disorders and age all impact the healing process.

I’ve met people who have never really recovered. If the vision recovers in the damaged eye, it is often not close to the vision remaining in the good eye, leading to what almost appears to be double vision. I suffer a bit of this. At first, it left me nauseous, but, a few years in I’ve made a sort of peace with it, and wink my left eye closed for detail work, and shooting.

The right eye is corrected to 20/20. Thank goodness.

Best,
Ted

Those detached retinas can really be bad. I had a buddy in his early to mid 70s , who married a woman from Thailand and they owned some property over there. So every year he would travel back and forth to Thailand with his wife. He was there one year and went to open up a bottle of water and the cap blew off and hit him in his left eye. And he ended up with a detached retina. The eye doctor over there told him not to get on a plane and try to fly home because
the altitude could damage his eye permanently. So he had an eye doctor over there work on his eye and it ended up being so butchered he couldn't shoot anymore with his left eye and he was always a left-handed shooter. He got back to the States and went to see his eye doctor and his eye doctor here told him that he could have flown home and it shouldn't have damaged his eye but it was too late by then. And he could have repaired his eye. But it was too late. He never was the same. He tried to shoot right handed, but could never do very well at all. He had a left-handed Perazzi that he always used, but after that accident he never could shoot right-handed very well, either. Always be careful when you open up a cold plastic bottle of water in the summer. I've heard of the cap blowing off more than once over the years. Ever since then anytime I opened up a bottle of pop or water I turned it away from my face.

He may not have had the time to fly, either, Jimmy. You only have so long with an interrupted blood supply to the retina, to get the work done. My doc said it was an emergency surgery, and I woke up, was diagnosed, and under the knife the following day. Greatful for the vision I have in the left eye, but, it isn’t what it was.
After the surgery, I wore blaze orange and green arm bands saying I couldn’t medi-vacced by aircraft, as the nitrous oxide bubble they put in the eye to put pressure on the retina would expand at altitude and cause problems.

I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.

Best,
Ted

Well...I must say that Kirby is very efficient. That Newnham arrived today (after buying it Monday). When I picked up the box it was shipped in I knew it was going to be very light. Beautifully packed, unwrapping it was a process akin to a striptease. How you can get these overall dimensions (14 5/8 LOP and 30-inch 12-bore tubes) to weigh 6lbs2 is a mystery to me (it actually feels lighter). The wood is even prettier than his photography of it, with good figure and a nice leather-wrapped pad. Downtown tomorrow for work, so I'll take this gun down to MW Reynolds to confirm a few things but....wow! Photos to follow (it's likely still up on Kirby's webpage as well).

I was going through some of my purchases, and have a couple lightweight 12's coming. One in particular is a Alex Henry 26" ejector with Churchill rib coming in at 5-15oz.

I have never suffered from excess recoil or injury from shooting my very light guns. However I once neglected to notice that there was an old paper Super X ten gauge 1 5/8 ounce load mixed in with my light handloads. I fired it in my 6 1/4 pound ten gauge Sauer and thought I had been bitten by a rattlesnake. I'm just glad my lovely gun survived.