Hammer gun outing

[Blackpowder]

Last Saturday as a guest at a local syndicate shoot I decided to give my ancient Army and Navy hammer gun an airing. It is quite a plain sidelock gun with no engraving and is marked 'K Quality' (keeper), but has an elegance of its own. I have owned this since 1959 in the days when you went to the local post office and for ten shillings purchased a shotgun license for a year. No questions asked, I think it was assumed then that if you had criminal intentions you would not be buying a license. Never mind it cost the princely sum of £15 and I needed a new nipple spring at thrupence and that was it. For thirty years this was my main gun despite a flirtation with a Spanish sxs and a rather odd sidelock non ejector. Its place was taken more recently by a Thomas Wild hammergun, itself displaced by a W.R.Pape boxlock ejector and a few weeks ago a John Dickson R/A requiring re-proof joined the stable.

 

Funny thing was a lot of the younger Guns on the shoot had never seen a hammer gun, wondered how you cocked it, asked about the insulating tape holding on a loose forend and perhaps believed that the tape was to cover a hole in the barrels and stop the shot spraying side ways. For some reason they thought the ballistics would be different than their modern ou guns. Fortunately at the first drive after missing a wind driven cock pheasant with both barrels the hen which followed equally fast dropped a long way behind to the first barrel.

Total bag for the day was 14 pheasants 3 falling to my ancient piece with two of them really first class testing shots, the third I marked and have just plucked had only taken shot in the head and neck an unlucky bird indeed.

 

Blackpowder