Kyrie:
A very informative post. I for one had no idea they were configured this way in Spain.
What would a customer expect to get if, for example, they ordered a custom built Spanish gun and specified it was to be used for Quail and Grouse but also as a regular Skeet gun?
Jim
Jim,
What you would get would depend on a host of factors, the two biggest of which are how well he understood your usage and his own predilection for how best to get that usage out of a gun.
Just saying ‘for hunting quail and grouse’ would probably be unwise. One of the factors that determines a gun’s proper weight is how much it will be carried, so the needs to know the kind of hunt the gun is for (“On any given day I will walk five miles over mountainous ground.”, or “I shoot driven game, and walk very little.”). Another factor that governs weight is how much the gun will be fired (“I regularly shoot one round of skeet a week.”, versus “I regularly shoot five rounds of skeet every day.”)
American hunters have a one-gun-does-everything mindset that is foreign to Spanish gun makers. To them, shotguns are like golf clubs; every gun has, and was made for, a specific purpose.
For something like chucker where a gun is carried over miles of bad terrain and fired maybe three or four times a day a light game gun is preferred (for a 12 gauge, weight generally runs in the six to six and half pound range). The Ascensio Zabala is a good example of a light game gun. Light game guns are lightly built, and require lightly recoiling shells. It’s not unusual to find the butt stock of a light game gun has been significantly hollowed out to balance the gun. Heavy loads cause excessive wear on the action and may actually break the stock.
For driven shooting where the shooter is on stand and cannot move, and will shoot dozens of birds in a day, a medium game gun is the “golf club” of choice. Medium game guns typically run seven to seven and a half pounds. An “all round” medium game gun will have two barrels. One set of barrels would be choked M/F for bird hunting, and the other set of barrels would be choked IC/IM for use with buck shot and slugs on boar.
Competition guns, like the Luis Arrizabalaga, are very special purpose guns, are very heavily built, and may run eight pounds or better. They are typically choked full/extra full, or at a minimum IM/F.
All that said, people do go the gun makers and want a dual purpose gun made. That’s done with the understanding that the resulting gun will do both jobs (say, bird hunting and skeet shooting) acceptably well, but neither job as well a purpose built gun would.
The Luis Arrizabalaga is an example of a dual purpose gun. Its primary purpose is live pigeon shooting and the secondary purpose is a medium game gun. It has a set of barrels choked IM/F for competition shooting and a second set of barrels choked IC/M for “feather and fur” hunting. Its weighs weight depend on which barrels are mounted (the competition barrels are heavier than the hunting barrels).
Remember the context in which the Spanish gun maker works; hunting has historically been a pursuit of the royalty or at least the landed gentry. These are the folks who could afford to buy shotguns like golf clubs, and that’s what they did – a gun for each purpose.
This is a mindset that is foreign to American shooters, and is one of the biggest reasons Americans get into trouble with Spanish shotguns. I know of at least two cases where guys bought light game guns, treated them as if they were heavy competition guns, and then bitched about low quality Spanish guns when the guns came apart. Conversely, it’s common for Americans to buy medium game guns expecting to get light game guns, and then [censored] and moan about how the Spanish cannot make a gun with the proper weight.