Sports Publications

Shorter shells and lighter guns - Shot Gunner

Guns Magazine, June, 2002 by Holt Bodinson

Coming upon some fellow quail hunters the other day, I was curious about the 12 gauge 3 1/2 inch chambered autoloader one of the hunters hauled around. We exchanged your normal fellowship-of-the-field notes about numbers of quail taken, and missed, and seen, and their whereabouts. In the course of the conversation, I drifted around to asking the 3 1/4-inch toting chap how he liked his gun. He observed that it was heavy, about 8 pounds, and long, but he bought it because it was a universal shotgun that could handle 2 3/4 inch, 3 inch and 3 1/4 inch shells interchangeably. I didn't comment that his gun was really designed for more static field activities like waterfowling and turkey hunting, but it got me thinking about gun weight and design and current ammunition offerings for upland game.

As shotgunners, we've been a pretty conservative lot recently. Our rifle toting brethren are out there buying the lightest wands they can find, as evidenced by the popularity of the 5.25-pound Remington Model 700 Titanium and Kimber's 5.5-pound 84M Classic Sporter chambered in short, efficient cartridges like the .308 Win. and 7mm-08 Rem. And don't forget the new rimless short magnums. Even the rim-fire hunters are now chasing the Lilliputain, ultra-new, .17 Hornady Magnum Rimfire, while we're still sitting here with 6.25 to 11 pound shotguns firing the same .410, 28, 20, 16, 12 and 10 gauges that evolved before recorded history.

Now I'm not advocating that we bring back the 24 gauge or the 32 gauge, although Fiocchi still turns out excellent field loads for both. Nor that we give the 16 gauge the stretch of a 3-inch magnum. But as shotgunners, we ought to do something creative.

I keep looking at Aguila's little 1.75-inch "Minishell" that pushes 5/8 ounces of No. 7s out of a 12 gauge at 1,175 feet per second, and wondering if a little bit of imaginative development on the short end might be the way to go.

On The Lighter Side

In the heyday of English wingshooting, when a gentleman upland hunter might account for 100 driven birds a day and thousands over the course of a shooting year, he very well might have been shooting a 5.5-pound, 12 gauge SxS chambered for the 2 inch shell or a 6-pound SxS taking the 2 1/4 inch shell. English makers of the day were very much attuned to the concept of balancing gun weight and scale to recoil, and the use of the shorter 2 to 2 1/2 inch 12 gauge cases holding 7/8 to 1 ounce of shot respectively allowed them to build light framed, svelte doubles that did glorious work at ranges out to 45 yards without beating up the shooter.

And the 2 inch and 2 1/2 inch 12 gauge shells are still with us.

Gamebore offers a complete selection of field loads. Bismuth markets a 2 1/2 inch waterfowl loading. Empty Fiocchi hulls are available in 2 inch and 2 1/2 inch sizes. And Ballistic Products even offers a complete reloading manual entitled Care and Feeding of Fine Doubles, with scores of recipes for the 2, 2 1/4 and 2 1/2 inch cartridges.

So my modest New Millennium proposal to the shotgun and ammunition manufactures of the world is to bring back the light framed, dynamic, upland, 2 inch or 2 1/4 inch 12 gauge with a load of 7/8 ounce of No. 6, 7 or 7 1/2 shot. It needn't be a double, although a Browning Citori Upland, Beretta Ultralight or Bill Hanus Birdgun would be nice. No, it could just as well be a shortened-action, lightweight, Remington 1100 or Franchi AL 48.

I know, I know, the marketing departments will think I've really dipped off the deep end this time. But I have met at least one quail hunter who would gladly trade-in his "universal" 3 1/4-inch autoloader for a real upland gun.

No... make that two quail hunters!

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Aguila

www.aguilaammo.com

Ballistic Products

www.ballisticproducts.com

Beretta

www.berettausa.com

Bill Hanus Birdguns

www.billhanusbirdguns.com

Bismuth

www.bismuth-notox.com