Early Wet Snow

Snow on high bush
cranberries.

      Gray skies dribbled wet snow, which mixed with the soggy ground. The weeds that still stood readily soaked clothes. The dogs didn’t mind any of it. They were happy to hunt and loved the conditions.

      It was the last stretch before we turned the woods over to the rifle hunters and their search for deer. The morning temperatures had been down around or below freezing and the days were noticeably shorter than a few weeks ago. The hills bordering our valley looked soft, almost like supple gray fur.

      The grouse had scattered, the family groups broken up by hunters, human or otherwise. Woodcock were still around and a lucky hunter could find flight birds in numbers, or none. Soon they would all be gone. Depending on the year, grouse might be around apple trees or mountain ash or high bush cranberries. This year every fruit bearing tree produced massive crops, so the birds were scattered.

      With the season winding down we decided to spend the morning in a favorite old covert. The cover has changed from alders to poplar to mature poplar, but it was still a favorite covert that always has birds. A few ancient apple trees hid in the mix, always hinting of grouse..

The ground was soggy everywhere..

      The ground was soaked and almost immediately a woodcock fled ahead of one of the dogs. Down the hill we hunted and then turned northward when the ground turned to bog. On small hummocks covered with young maples each of the dogs pointed a woodcock. When Maggie points Colby always honors, I wish the opposite were also true. Some easy shots were miffed, but during the next hour two connected.

Colby pointing a woodcock hiding in a nasty thicket.

      Working our way back by a couple of old  apple trees another woodcock was found, but no grouse. Often they are there, but not that day. Near the truck bird scent aroused Colby’s interest, but after some serious tail wagging she abandoned it. Maggie trotted over and snapped onto point. On second thought, Colby decided to honor.

      It was a thicket impossible walk into. Kicking against the side, the woodcock almost smacked me in the face on the way by, then wove its way downhill through the trees.          

      Two shots never touched a feather.

      With clothes soaked it was time to leave. The dogs slept on the drive home while I sipped coffee.

      The bird season is just too short.

The Magic of Doubles

     There is something magical about double barrel shotguns, whether the barrels are stacked one over the other or they are arranged side by side.  More people seem to like them stacked up these days, and with a single trigger. Maybe it makes more sense.  I don’t think it was always that way though, because if you start looking at old guns for sale there sure are quite a few ancient side-by-sides and the over-n-unders are all newer.

Pair of Parkers

     Gun in England means a shotgun.  A rifle is called a rifle, not a gun.  Somehow, on this side of the Atlantic, we started calling everything that shoots a gun.  The English developed the shotgun to its highest form, at least in the configurations of double barrels.  Americans, with their love for firepower, developed popular pump and semi-automatic shotguns that could fire more than two shells. Most serious bird hunters have more than one type of shotgun and many have multiples of many types. 

     During the last half of the eighteen hundreds and into the early years of the twentieth century, gun makers all tried to outdo one another by improving the gun’s design. Hundreds of new patents relating to firearms were filed during that period. Everyone wanted to make the guns lighter and easier to open. Ejectors were a huge problem to solve. Several attempts at single triggers failed. Chokes appear to have been an American invention, but gunsmiths on both sides of the Atlantic experimented with them.

     The earlier guns were all sidelocks, a natural progression as the early flintlock and caplock muzzle loading guns transitioned into the first break open guns.  The hammers just stayed in the same place they always had been. About 1875, two gunsmiths named Anson and Deeley, working for a gun making company called Westley Richards, developed a simple and strong hammerless action called the boxlock.  If you want to get an argument started among fans of double barrel shotguns, ask which action is better…sidelock or box lock. And then Westley Richards came out with the droplock just to add more fuel to the argument.  

     A friend’s uncle up in Maine was my early bird hunting mentor.  His favorite upland bird gun was an old Ithaca side-by-side, a twelve gauge.  I don’t remember how it was choked, but the barrels were closer to brown than blue and the checkering was worn smooth.  He also used that gun for a deer hunting brush gun too, with buckshot in the tighter barrel and a slug in the open one.

     I saved money and wandered the gun shops, looking at double barrel shotguns and dreaming.  There weren’t many used over-n-unders in those days, and any to be found cost way too much.  The only new side-by-sides  in the shops I visited were imported Ithaca guns made by SKB.  I loved the looks, but at a price of over three hundred dollars they were way out of my reach.  Besides, I wanted a gun with double triggers, which my friend’s uncle told us was the best because you could pick your choke instantly.  I eventually bought an old Ithaca for fifty dollars.

     I never shot that gun well and eventually sold it to my brother, who still has it to this day.  Shortly afterwards, during a stop at a gun shop, I happened upon a Parker VH for three hundred dollars, a lot of money to a young guy in the mid-nineteen-seventies, but I had a full time job by then and I was hot for a Parker.  And with that gun the birds started dropping out of the sky.

A late season grouse.

     Sometime after that I read about “cast” in shotgun stocks, and sure enough that Parker’s stock was cast for a lefty, which I am.  What luck!  When I visited my brother I checked that old Ithaca and sure enough it was cast for a right handed person.  No wonder I couldn’t hit anything with it! 

     Cast is a slight bend to the side in the stock, about at its narrowest point, which is called the wrist, and it makes pointing the gun more natural and easier.  Cast for a right handed person is called cast off, and for a lefty it’s called cast on.  American guns are not usually cast one way or the other, but my first two guns were, one for me and the other for someone right handed.  Whenever I pick up a shotgun in a gun shop now I always check for cast.  The easiest way to do that is to make sure it’s unloaded, turn the gun upside down and rest the heel of the stock on something soft, like your toe, and then look down the barrels from the muzzle end.  Any cast in the stock is usually pretty easy to see.

     You probably have owned a pump shotgun or two, and maybe still do. I own two pumps, one is set up as a deer gun with a scope, and the other is my lousy weather duck gun.  Somewhere I have an old Remington 1100, which I used to be deadly with back when we could throw lead shot t waterfowl. When you look at it you know it has seen a lot of nasty weather and way too much salt water.  But none of those guns gets handled too much anymore.

     The upland woods calls to me these days and it’s always hunting over dogs. I think the quick handling and fast pointing of the doubles suits that type of hunting better.  That old Parker still sits in the safe, but it weighs over eight pounds, which is a bit much for carrying all day. For a while an over-n-under Browning Citori in 20 gauge was my go-to gun, but eventually I went to a 20 gauge side-by-side with two triggers, the Model RBL made by the Connecticut Shotgun Manufacturing Company. I like that it can handle steel shot where it is required without a worry.  Somehow the side-by-sides just seem to nestle in the crook of my arm better when I’m walking and I never see the barrels when I shoot, so I don’t believe over-n-under or side-by-side makes much difference as far as killing game. 

      Besides, I love the old traditional things, and it is hard to beat a side-by-side for that. 

The first grouse of 2018.