Topic: If These Nine Shotgun Writers Could Only Have One Gun, Which Smoothbore Would They Pick? (Read 135 times)
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Topic: If These Nine Shotgun Writers Could Only Have One Gun, Which Smoothbore Would They Pick? (Read 135 times)
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“The little wand just fits so well that about all I have to do is lift it and point in the general direction of flapping wings,” Spomer says. “The first year I used it on pheasants, I bagged 23 of 25 roosters we engaged. Several of those fell to my second barrel, but they fell nonetheless.”
Few shooters relish a perfect round of skeet more than Payton Miller. He schooled me for years at the range during our lunch breaks when we worked together in Illinois. I guess the old codger grew tired of 12-gauge recoil, because he ditched an inertia-driven Benelli M1 (that he almost always shot the lights out with) for a single-shot Winchester 37 .410. There were more than 1 million 37s manufactured in 12-, 16-, 20-, and 28-gauge, plus .410-bore. The shotguns have an exposed hammer spur just to the rear of the top break lever, and all barrel is fixed full.
“Why do I like it?” Miller says. “It’s got a bombproof action, it fits me, and is stone simple to operate. Plus, it spares me from having to embarrass myself trying to shoot doubles at skeet.”
John Gordon was a Texas snow goose guide in the late 1980s and early ’90s when more than 1 million white geese spent winter on the coastal prairie. Thirty years later, he still chases the spring migration of mid-continent snows in the Mississippi Delta and Arkansas. So the CZ Ringneck, a Turkish-made 28-gauge side-by-side, seemed an odd choice for the old snow goose killer, who buys more shotguns in a year than most of us will in a decade. But if the gun fit is right, there’s money in his pocket, and the gun goes bang, Gordon is likely to buy it. The Ringneck debuted in 2005, but fizzled out in less than 10 years. It sits on a boxlock action with engraved sideplates, and has 26- or 28-inch barrels. It was available in 12-, 16-, or 20-, 28-gauge, plus .410.
“It’s a gun I reach for in the safe many times every fall. [Mine has] 28-inch barrels, single selective trigger, Prince of Wales stock, color-case-hardened receiver… it was the best of the CZ import guns, in my opinion. Why they discontinued it [in 2014] is a mystery to me. The closest model now is the Sharp-Tail. It’s similar, but I still prefer the Ringneck.”
One of the most well-traveled hunters in the country, Coogan lived and hunted in Kenya during the 1960s and ’70s. He was also an editor for Petersen’s Hunting in the 1990s when print magazines still had large budgets to send reporters around the world to find stories. Coogan also hosted “Benelli On Assignment,” an outdoor television show that took him across North and South America, as well as Africa. But before all that extensive travel and hunting experience, Coogan grew up with a Winchester Model 42—the .410 variant of the famed Model 12—in hand. As he aged, Coogan acquired each gauge of M12, which was engineered by T.C. Johnson, but based on John M. Browning’s design.
“I began with a M42 and then as I got older and bigger, moved up to a 20-gauge for doves and quail, and finally the 12-gauge,” Coogan says. “In high school, I took the gun with me, so I could [dove] hunt after class. My first duck with the M42 was a drake green-wing teal that I remember folding like it was yesterday.”
Yes, there are still double-barreled shotguns handmade right here in the U.S., and Bruce Buck’s favorite is one of the best you can buy: the A10 American Rose & Scroll in 20-gauge. To build this over/under requires 1,300 individual steps. Each co*ponent of CSMC shotguns is inspected by multiple gunsmiths, and every shotgun is inspected by the president of the co*pany before it is shipped to the customer. Buck, an acco*plished wingshot, international skeet and sporting clays champion, and a former coach at the U.S. Olympic training center, uses his A10 for upland game and shooting sports. As you can imagine, these shotguns don’t co*e cheap. A 20-gauge starts at $15,000 and rises from there depending on what you want added, such as the quality of the wood, double triggers, fixed chokes, and more.
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“It is beautifully built, but the reason that I like it the most is due to its perfect balance,” Buck says. “It does equally well at game birds and sporting clays. It’s good looking, reliable, and a heck of a shooter. You can’t ask for more in a shotgun.”
Read Next: The Best Workhorse Shotguns That Are No Longer in Production (But You Need to Own)
John Taylor is one of the last great gun writers from my father’s generation, and it makes perfect sense that Taylor’s most coveted gun is one of this country’s iconic hunting doubles. His A.H. Fox HE-Grade Super Fox 12-gauge was the gun of Nash Buckingham. John Olin of the Western Cartridge co*pany famously developed a 3-inch load in 1921 and found that it shot best out of an A.H. Fox double-bored shotgun. So in 1923, America’s first dedicated waterfowl shotgun was built: the Super Fox. Buckingham made the gun famous. His personal gun, Bo Whoop, features in countless Buckingham tales. A 9-pound break-action with lengthened forcing cones, 30-inch over bored barrels, and fixed full chokes, the Super Fox could kill ducks cleanly out to 60 yards (farther in the hands of an acco*plished wingshooter) if loaded with Olin’s Super-X copper-plated lead payload. Taylor still shoots the old double gun but has to load it with Kent Tungsten-Matrix or bismuth to kill a ducks now that lead is banned.
“The first Super Fox was shipped to Buckingham, Ensley, Carrigan co*pany in 1924, when the great Nash Buckingham was a partner in the Memphis sporting goods firm,” Taylor says. “He heaped praise on the Super Fox. With the balance of a fine bespoke British game gun it’s a joy to shoot with bismuth and Tungsten-Matrix through its extra-heavy, tightly chambered, overbored barrels and even tighter chokes.”
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