Accuspell

For the saltmarsh shooters. This nickel plated version was a special order option. It is completely impervious to saltwater, but it is shiney, so the top coat is just matt black paint - it flakes off, just repaint it.. or do camo pattern if that is your thing. The paint is just to make it anti glare, it does nothing to protect the metal, that is already taken care of by the nickel plating. We have some matt sage green, or black so happy to recoat for a buyer, if they want it. 12 bore 3" magnum. Walnut stock with adjustable butt, by inserting spacers (there is spare spacer which I forgot to photograph) Rubber recoil pad. LOP 14 1/4" - 14 3/4" by choosing the spacers. At the moment it is at 14 1/2". Beavertail forend with lever latch and ebony or buffalo horn tip insert (see picture). 28" barrels with multichoke (4x spare chokes and choke key). File cut raised rib with fibre optic bead. Single selective trigger. Convertible slip, from leg-o-mutton to full length. So you can take the gun down and stow it short for ease of traversing the marsh, or carry it full length. Sheepskin lined and with outer pockets and pocket for cleaning rod. £400 I am away for work early in the morning and only have internet in the evenings - not allowed a phone or anything at work. messages will be answered once I get back to the digs each evening. The gun is for sale for a friend's widow - it is now on my certificate to facilitate sale and can be tried on my facilities by arrangement, but while this job is on only at weekends.

I think the courier is about £8... George my son will be home later. He has sent a few already and so can answer that more accurately. I took a couple over to Nottinghamshire for a lad, I was going fishing on one of our club waters over that way, so it was no hardship, he just bunged me a tenner for a fuel contribution.

We have a few of these available. They are formerly 40mm grenade boxes and have a rubber seal around the inside of the lid which cams down tight both ends and there is a hoop handle at each end. I have wire brushed and rattle can painted mine. They come up really nicely, any surface rust is very light and just wire brushes off. If you have Smoothright or Hammerite that would work well, mine was just a normal rattle can. They have little 'feet' on the lids so they can be stacked happily and remain stable. I hesitate to say airtight, but certainly watertight so ideal for storing, not just cartridges (400 12-bore cartridges fit perfectly, 16 boxes of 25) but tools, garden chemicals or seed packets - anything you don't want to get damp in the shed! Dimensions are: 18" long x 10" high x 6" wide. STRONG ENOUGH YOU CAN STAND ON THEM. 😁 They are £15 each plus post / carriage, can drop off if passing - or collect for free!

I managed to get 3.

Amazing. I have never managed more than 28. That was on newly drilled peas! I have never been much good at decoying, despite having a day with Archie Coates back in the 80s.

Relighting an old flame of a thread. I was perusing as I have got my semi auto and whilst I know how my SBS behaves with heavy loads, everything I have found gave open chokes the best pattern with big pellets, the slug question posed hasn't had an answer. I have used slugs extensively, in the USA and Canada. A 1oz slug travelling at 1500fps (good enough velocity for fag packet maths - they are generally around this figure give or take 50fps) you are looking at 435grains at 1500fps = 2175 ft-lbs (rounded to nearest full figure). Not far off the same as a 6mm centrefire, standard cartridge not magnum. A slug is accurate out to 100 yards too, but then becomes pretty wild and erodes velocity rapidly. at 75 yards I could hit a saucer every time off the shoulder (no rest) and it will lift a 20 litre tub off water off the ground and send it backwards 8-10 yards, what is left of it, because they do 'expand' a bit those plastic containers! Out at 100 yards that accuracy has halved and is not humane enough for me, even on feral pigs (wild boar), which are a large target, you still need a killing shot. At that sort of range a rifle is a must in my view. The shotgun is very effective in scrub at under 50 yards where a moving target is more difficult with a rifle.

Tony White, Shugborough.

My semi auto is an old but well looked after Beretta AL390 with multi chokes. Nothing has happened to the 687 because until I had my licence I couldn't go and collect the guns. I am hoping to get down and fetch the 687, Winchester 23 and the 10 bore. Then I can photograph them and get them on the sale page. A bit pointless until I am in a position to do some pictures. I still have the 10 bore cartridges to go with the 10 bore. The silage fields have been cropped. I am going to try and go in the morning and decoy some crows. I have never done it before!

Some time before Christmas I was asking about semi auto guns, because of my shoulder I was swapping from side-by-side to a semi auto in the hope the recoil system would soften the blow a bit. 3 or 4 shots were as much as I could withstand from the old gun, even with 32g loads. My shoulder ached for days afterwards, my injuries are one reason I hardly used the shotgun and mainly shot with the air rifle. I had to wait while my licence was being renewed (took over 6 months) before I could swap, but finally I have collected the semi. I even got invited for a walk round for a bunny by the seller and I chrstened it with the first shot. It felt weird with the weight being shuffled about by the springs, but the recoil seemed OK. I am now keen to get the decoys out as some stage and see what it is like after a few shots. My decoying is very poor, my record was on freshly sprouted peas and I managed 22, but that was many years ago. I don't seem to be able to get in the right place. Most of my shooting is woodland or grazing fields, so not a great deal of decoying opportunities. Are the branchers about yet on the crow colonies?

If you need to reduce numbers, the single most effective way is to ***** the eggs. Shoot what you can, but ***** the nests of those that remain. I use a .22 air rifle and it poleaxes them, to be fair so does the .20, but on the farm lake I have only needed to take a handful to keep them tolerable. With the air rifle you can get 2 or 3 before they twig something is wrong and take wing. You HAVE to hit them in the head beside the eye, so your marksmanship has to be spot on, thankfully, they stick their heads up like an umbrella handle, which is handy. Looking front on, a neck shot works provided you hit central.

Yes the chap who asked had it straight off. It has arrived.

Interesting. I like 7.5s for woodcock, 28g load of Supreme Game. I sold my side x side the other week, but that load gave me two R&Ls, witnessed, on the same day up with Mark Piper at The Gearach. I had a high snipe with the same load too, a proper reaching up to a speck in the sky snipe. Pattern is everything, the pellets have sufficient energy for soft feathers. I wouldn't want to stand down range, even at 60 odd yards! My barrels were imp and 1/4, but that didn't limit the sensible killing range any, it just gave me a bit of leeway!

A pair of binoculars would serve you just as well and not need the cost of new batteries every few years. Drone batteries are not cheap and they lose their ability to recharge after a few years. Using them infrequently is worse than using them regularly. They are good fun, but are a photographic tool really. be aware that birds of prey don't like them and do have a go, so do seagulls and crows!

If it isn't in this section, then which section should I use to ask for reasonable gun valuation figures please? I am not sure if that counts as a 'general' or something specific I haven't found yet. Nothing specific to think of - Gunstar and those places are so awkward and clumsy to use and I am not sure they are actually representative are they? I tried to put my gun on there for sale, but it was so complicated I gave up. I couldn't work out how to do it. It s gone now, but I am on the lookout for one.... a rough idea of prices would be handy.

I have only just stumbled across this section of the forum. I am not familiar with how these places work, I tend to just stick to the 'general' area and forget to look around! An old saying I was taught when learning to shoot, back in the 1970s, "If God had meant us to shoot with an over & under he would have put one eye over the other." I sold my English gun the other week. I think the pictures are still about on the sale page. I have deleted them to make room on my confuser. I bought it in the gunshop on Heavitree Road, Exeter in 1985 I think it was, might have been 84. I was milking cows on a big dairy farm at Broadclyst (Elbury Farm, owned by the Lee family. The herdsman was Graham Swinson, if anyone from that area knows if he is still about). Anyway, following my crash I have bought a semi auto. I still haven't got it yet, still waiting on my renewal (from November, with a September approach date!) I had the interview yesterday, so hopefully within a couple of weeks I can go and fetch it and see how it feels. I still have the Beretta Silver Hawk I bought new from The Countryman in Derby, the date will be in the case with all the paperwork and spare chokes. I have only ever used 'true' and 'imp cyl' through it. The other chokes have never been out of their plastic tubes! It works fine. I will try and find a picture of two and join in on here. It has accounted for a couple of cormorants this 'protection' season. I am on the licence, so don't worry.

Yes, I do. It is an original Turner-Richards which is fired by pulling the pin back and is a break open design. It has the 'rubber bullet' to put your dummy skin/wings on too. It is lashing down at the moment, but is going to be nice tomorrow if you can let me photograph it tomorrow for you. It is fairly clean, not polished, obviously, but the hinge is still tight and the stem is greased, o-ring not cracked or stiff at all. I haven't got any blanks I don't think. I will have a look. There might be a tin somewhere.

The last week or so has certainly been blowy and that has made any shooting a real challenge. However, in and around the farm buildings still offered some pickings, even if they were lean. The ferals are very wary and the wind has made them even more so. To make life even more difficult the starlings are flocking into the buildings, the feed passage, the calfhouse and the dry cow calving shed, tens of thousands of them. They act as an early warning system for the feral pigeons, as soon as you move the starlings fly up in great flocks and that alerts the ferals. There are so many starlings I have taken to wearing a fertiliser sack over me as a hooded shawl. Everything is an inch thick in guano, even the cows' backs. A couple of hours this afternoon resulted in four ferals, three collected for magpie bait and one on the roof which the buzzards will fight over. Oh for the jet stream to get back to normal, up north where it belongs.

DO NOT use O2 in your airgun! FAC - goes from 150 shots perfill at 12ft-lbs to about 30 shots at FAC. As a rough idea of how much air you will use. Once on FAC it loses value massively, unless a Rapid, they seem to have achieved cult status and prices are according to demand. It will help you cheat the wind though. Realistic, still air, range on a woodie (I never take head shots, a good boiler house shot puts them in the bag, a slight miss on the head that smashes the beak to bits leaves a bird happy to fly off but unable to feed and die a lingering death over weeks, unless a predator takes it out. A good boiler house shot works every time and doesn't limit your shots so much. Bottle filling - use diver's air from a scuba filling place. About £5 - £10 per fill (12 litre bottle worthwhile getting to save trips to get it filled so often).

Bloody hell, 30 birds and 20 birds - i think I have done well if I get 6 in a day. I get bigger numbers roost shooting with the air rifle. This decoying lark is a black art.

Yours are already set apart with the other stuff. I am coming down, it isn't just your stuff. It should have been this week but Eunice put paid to that! Planning for next week sometime hopefully. Whereabouts are you chap? So I can plan logistics.

Sam - is it you that has the pigeon cartridges, bipod and cartridge bag? If so your duck decoys are set aside... these are some more! If you want them added, no problem. I had hoped to be heading your way today... I think my Dorset fishing has gone west, so it will just be a delivery trip.

Soory chaps, I have had some help with the setup stuff and put my town in now... Uttoxeter is near Alton Towers if that means anything. It is about as central in the country as it is possible to get - straight line from Brum to Manchester about 30miles north of Brumingham. In the triangle between Stoke-on-Trent Derby and Burton-on-Trent. I do travel, so it is possible to help with mileage. For instance I am off to Porthcawl for sunrise tomorrow! I shall be going to Andover and Portsmouth soon and then up to Northumberland... so you probably aren't that far off my route to meet up. A load of books to go through yet - and there are some duck decoys (6 or 8).

I have a load of kit to clear for a widow. You may have seen the post that was taken down... there are 21 pigeon full body decoys, I found another one after taking the pictures. The big net is about 20ft x 10ft. The hide poles are metal. The kit bag has no holes in it and acts as a rucksack for easy carrying into your position and doubles as something to sit on if you stuff it with straw or grass. All the decoys, both nets and room for some cartridges in the bag - the picture at the end is with everything in the first picture in the bag, except the poles. Does £75 all in sound about right? Obviously transport will have to be arranged, but I am travelling a bit, so can always meet en route if it helps, otherwise you are welcome to collect.

Re your blurred vision through the scope - just take the standard sights off and put them in a box for safe keeping. The reason you get the blurred fixed sights in the sight picture from the leup is because low magnification has much greater depth of focus, as does a smaller diameter objective lens - higher magnification and larger front lens BOTH reduce depth of focus. For fast target acquisition a lower power scope is preferable, high magnificatin that you have to fiddle with the focus every time is a pain in the neck in the field. You want to be able to see the target, lift the rifle and shoot, not faff about fiddling with the scope... I shoot virtually everything on 6x through either a 40mm or 32mm scope. That included professional stalking and fox culling out to 800 yards. The 6x is plenty for that and for pigeons and squirrels (iguanas are similar hunting, just in a different scenario). If I am shooting close quarters, then I turn it down to 4x for the greater depth of field and wider field of view to pick up rats running across th eyard, that kind of thing. I look forward to seeing some of your exploits.

You should use it more, it is better than whatever else you've got, including that 12 bore! 😁