Hunting with the Old Timers

A

AWS

Retired PM Staff
A few years ago I decided to start hunting with the guns I saw in my youth, sxs's both hammer and hammerless. I'm having a ball. I'm loading some very light low pressure loads in 2.5" 12 and 16 gauge hulls with 7/8 oz. of ITX #6's. Suprisingly my duck harvest didn't go down , in fact I'm doing better and my round count per bird is down also. I'm pretty sure that I'm much more picky about the shots I take.

Yesterday with a Husqvarna Model 51 12ga.



Last week with a French Robust 12ga.



I've also have taken out a Stevens Model 235 hammer double and an early(pre WW-I) French 16ga sxs that was used for shooting skeet off the fantail of a French ocean liner, heavily used but still solid.
 
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Nice old school guns there AWS. Pretty decent bag too - nice going.
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You gonna make it to the hunt this year in AZ? Missed huntin' with you last year.
 
Already planning it and am coordinating hunts on the way down. It's going to be an interesting year, an old trapping partner I have lost track of since 1980 has resurfaced, and is living in Globe, old friends from my early days are in Gold Canyon near Phoenix so I'll get to see them also.

I'm bringing another oldy to hunt with at the convention, a 1926 German drilling in 6.5x58R Sauer and double 16's on the top. I have NP 2's and BB's loaded for the 16's and they throw a pretty good pattern to 40 yards, perfect for the greasewood and manzanitas brush. Still working up a load for the rifle barrel, have it narrowed down to a 90gr Speer TNT sized to .260 or a 75gr Sierra .257 bullet, both showing promise to 200 yrd so far.

I'm working on a recipe for duck chili verde burritos.
 
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When I was young, on the pheasant opener, you would see the old timers out blocking with their hammer guns. I remember a few hammer doubles, but LOTS of Win md '97s. Wish I had some of them now.
 
This is the very first shotgun that I bought with my own money, 16ga, I knew nothing about Damascus and didn't care if I did hear about as mine said "Fine London Twist" on the top, it most likely has 2.5" chambers, I have never measured them. It slew a bunch of grouse ducks and pheasants with high brass JC Higgins #5's. It has graced my dads mantle for 30 years and now hangs in my sisters living room with a lot of other relics from my past, ice saws, peaveys, ice tongs, Newhouse traps, old muzzleloaders, deer antlers all from N. WI where she lives.



After giving it a good claning a couple years ago and looking it over realy good it turns out that it was originaly a 12ga that some gunsmith grafted a set of 16ga MZ barrels to.
 
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