Raptors

[getthegat]

As I've mentioned in other threads, I've recently acquired a Franchi Raptor 20 bore and this morning was my first proper outing with it. 

There have been a few crows on one field, quite aways from any houses and seeing as it was before 6.00 when I started setting up, I figured on being thoughtful of my neighbors. It didn't work out with only one pige down in 45 minutes, which Soph did an excellent blind retrieval of, from a thick bushy, brambly ditch. We moved at 7.00 ISH across the road to the cultivated bean field which is now quite sparse of pigeons compared to last week. We did ok with mostly fairly average shots, the odd decent one and a good long crow. Of course with a new gun, there were one or two terrible misses. At one point, a bird flew across the field about 200 yards from me, it went like a missile, coming down from around 100 feet to just above ground level and a big flock of woodies flew up from the field in front of it, scattering in all directions. It was black and I didn't recognize it, but boy was it fast, an amazing site. I wish I could have seen if it got a pigeon for its efforts. 

Nearly all the birds we shot were juveniles and at one time within less than 15 seconds, 3 came in one after the other, all to fall to the #6 30grm Gamebore shells. 

Soph is still snuffling the feathers off the birds instead of clean retrievals, but we had a nice couple of hours with 19 and the crow for just over 30 shots. 

Now into my 60s I'm finding I like looking down a single barrel and prefer a lighter gun. Not sure of the exact weight, but I think the Raptor 20 is about 6lbs.

I de-breasted the birds and found 3 different foods in the birds crops, non of which were beans.

[mossy835]

well done you had a good day.i found it hard as first with my 20 bore, but it gets better.but i use my 12 bores more.glad you had a few.

[getthegat]

Thanks for that. It's another challenge for sure and accuracy is just that bit more important. There's nothing better than a good clean long shot kill and it's just that little bit more special with a different size gun. I'm not allowing the word "little" to be attached to my 20 and today proved that at no point did I feel under gunned.