The Digweed Challenge
 

Friends met out at the farm to shoot some long range clay birds, to see if we could even get close to the Digweed Record. Many RST's were wasted. Few clays were broken. Much laughter ensued. And Cap'n Tom's D Grade certainly shamed the English guns...with one ridiculous 75+ yard shot in particular. We all retired to the porch for cool libation after that one.
http://parkerguns.org/forums/picture...ictureid=12975

We are very interested in the loads and the length of the barrels of the guns used.

The Challenge was three shooters, aged 75, 73 and 69. The range was set up for low angle, going away Texas Heart Shots. The trap was set about 25 yards so as to slow them birds down some as they got out there. Orange and yellow sprinkler flags were set at 5 yard intervals out to 100 yards. After any particularly impressive (lucky) shot we walked out to see where the pieces fell. Guns were 27 inch Charles Lancaster ic/xf...30 inch Cogswell cyl/f...32 inch Parker f/f (and we think he under reported his chokes). A variety of loads and I can't say which were which...but I shot my # 6 turkey loads out of the Cogswell and only used the one barrel. Tried a couple of 4's to no avail (but much snickering). Everybody shot RST's with a few leftover Polywads from the back of the drawer thrown in, but again we think Cap'n Tom snuck in a few ringers on us because frankly he is not that good.
http://parkerguns.org/forums/picture...ictureid=12976

That would be a hoot. My 32" F+/F+ Parker hammer gun will break clays using #7-1/2 target loads just before they hit the ground at 75yds. You have to laugh every time you break one that far out. I'd be pretty confident trying that with Destry's Swamp Angel.

What a lot of fun that must have been John! I’d love to try it but I wouldn’t know which Parker to shoot.

Several years ago when the PGCA Annual Meeting was held at Addieville in RI in conjunction with the Vintagers event Dave Suponski and I took our little 16 ga. 0-frame lifters with 24” cut barrels to the practice station to see what these guns would do at ‘out there’ targets.

We were both surprised at the distances we were breaking clays at! In fact, we drew a crowd of onlookers who quickly became our cheering squad. We were repeatedly breaking them at 40-50 yards.





.

Sounds like big fun, Kent.

I love to shoot the long bird challenge at sporting clays shoots, and have won a couple of them. Most people cannot visualize the leads necessary on, say ........ an 80 yard chandelle. Almost as hard is repeating it once you figure it out. Sometimes I can figure it out quickly, other times I never do.

Digweed's 130 yard record clay break was with #5 shot. He switched to that size at 100 yards, as he backed up after each break.

SRH

The Gould Brothers broke Digweeds record @ 160yards...but they had a sight on the shotgun....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv7RzK15MX0

Let them shoot a round of 100 with King George. My money is on him.:)

Mine also with giving odds...big odds:)...however, they still have the WR on the longest clay with a shotgun.

During a shoot an acquaintance and I were watching Digweed and between stations he said I’m going to go and shake his hand...I said I don’t think that would be a good idea..But he started to stroll on over with his hand out..George gave him “the look” and he quickly turned around and came back to our cart.

When the shoot was over he did the same and the two of them Had a nice conversation on shooting.

A good friend of mine, Bill McGuire outshot Digweed to win the American leg of the Triple Classic sporting clays championship some years ago, here in GA. I watched Digweed shoot several stations from well behind him hoping to see something interesting. I didn't. He is study in monotony when shooting. Just a machine.

I knew Bill and George were shooting the last round at the same time and Bill was having a really good round going into the last station. The pressure got to him, though, because he knew how close he and George were, in scoring. Bill dropped three easy birds on the last station, simply because of "choking" from the pressure. I lit out to go find George. I found him getting off his cart at the tent area. I walked up, extended my hand and asked how he shot the last round. "Not well" he replied, and told me how many he had dropped. I knew right then that Bill had beat him, and hurried back to Bill and told him he had won. He looked at me, incredulous, and asked how I knew. I said that I had just talked to George.

I found George to be very pleasant and friendly.

SRH