LeeMuller

The reason I suggested Burnham or Lohman is that their calling cassettes and instructional cassettes are a valuable training aid, especially for city dwellers who are not around wild birds enough to learn all their calls.

I the US, we call crows either to food or to fight. It only takes a few decoys. If you are calling to food, put one high up in a lookout position, to make them incoming crows feel everything is okay. For a fight, an owl decoy surrounded by some crows in branches will work. The calling is, of course, quite different and it helps to have two callers working two different calls, just like a half-dozen angry crows. A dead crow below a large owl sitting on a fence post is enough to rile up any good crow. If you go looking for Burns Brothers, or Lohman calls, you will find cassette tapes and CDs of all the call patterns. Some states permit the use of recorded calling while hunting varmits like crows, coyotes, and bobcats.

This Greener I handled settled on point of aim quickly, and I thought it would be ideal for pheasants flushing 30 yards ahead in corn. Live pigeon shooting still goes on in the USA quietly, and is really big in the Spanish countries like Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guatemala. Big O/U clays guns are seen, like Perazzi, Fabri, Beretta.

Yes. I know a few world-class skeet and clays shooters who shoot box bird matches in Mexico, Spain, Cuba. It is a rich sport, same crowd as horse racing. One of them won a Fabri for dropping 25 birds straight in the circle. It is a tough contest, where you know the winner much sooner than in international clay shooting.

Here in the US, we had to switch to steel shot in the 1970s. None of the old guns could shoot it - too hard on the chokes. Steel also shots one choke tighter than lead, anyway, and you risk damaging any gun if you shoot it tighter than Modified. Steel was a crippler. Steel drove the new guns to have chrome bores and screw-in chokes. Then we got Bismuth, which shot like lead, but cost 5 times as much. You can shoot it in the older guns. Now we have Tungsten matrix, which is expensive, but hits harder than lead. It can also be shot in older guns. It really hits the birds, but is best on goose and turkey. I bought a synthetic camo pump gun for nasty weather and steel, and added a special long, extended choke for steel, so I still use it inside 30 yards, like over decoys or shooting ducks in flooded timber, where they are darting through the trees at 75 to 100 feet.

Yes, it looks just like the picture, has a pistol grip and is Full and Full choked. My father used an Ithaca like it for ducks and geese with 3-inch shells throwing #2 lead. It would fold up birds at 65 yards like most guns do at 30. While it is not the gun I was looking for, it was a nice piece with great handling. The Winchester 101 is only $700 US, so I will probably buy it and keep thinking about this Greener, which is twice the price. I like SxS guns, and prefer to find a nice used one to paying a great deal more for a new one. This Greener is not fancy, but has the feel. Thanks for the advice. As soon as I get some more decoys carved, I am going to shoot behind a dairy barn with the shorter guns I have and see how they do, because I should be able to get the birds in closer, where my son can exercise his 20-gauge autoloader.

This Greener opens by top lever and has a barrel selector button on the left side at the rear of the action. It is choked F/F. I had gone to the shop to look at a Winchester 101 O/U with 26-inch barrels and had been swinging it first. It surprised me that the much longer Greener did not feel that much more muzzle-heavy. I am 6 foot and with its splinter forend, I hold a bit farther out that I do on an O/U. It sounds as though most of you shoot sitting from a blind, or perhaps sit and stand up for the shot, as in duck hunting. Almost everyone here hunts dove standing, because they come so suddenly, often singly, from one of several routes. What sort of loads and chokes are you using in your guns, and what sort of ranges? In magazines like THE FIELD, one always sees the tweedy types with SxS guns, but apparently the O/U is more common in the UK from the advertisements. I was shopping O/U guns, and thinking even of a sporting clays gun for dove, pheasant and pigeon. The only problem with those, as well as older SxSs, is the lack of magnum chambers. We have to shoot non-lead for waterfowl.

I am new here, an American, shooting feral pigeons, coyotes and bobcats in the off-season for fun, to protect game populations, and introduce young hunters to hunting. Pigeon shooting here is uncommon, so I am having to learn from the UK, and build my own decoys. I was looking at a W.W. Greener SxS recently in 12 gauge with 32-inch barrels that felt wonderful. It seemed perfect for pigeon work, and I figured I am more likely to get an opinion on these guns from the UK than from America, although I do know two owners, both given new Greeners for high school graduation in the 1950s.