I am sorry to hear about the loss of Allen's friend Ron. The gun itself is a memorial.
It sounds like Ron's gun was intended to be a trap or pigeon gun. But, to elaborate on the issue Mr. McCormack raises in response to BRDHNTER's question about why a gun buyer might decline to order ejectors for a water-fowling gun:
In my father's copy of DUCK HUNTING, by John G. McKenty, A. S. Barnes and Company, New York, 1953 the author considered the "full ejector" gun to be "border[ing] on the "discourteous" to fellow gunners in a duck blind.
On page 53, among other objections he has to ejectors McKenty says that:
"....-- I might add that, in a gunning blind the full ejector can be most annoying to your companions....
Perhaps you have just fired your two shots and there is a cripple out front trying to get away . Your fellow gunner is just drawing a bead on the flapping cripple, when you open your gun and the blind seems to be filled with flying bouncing empty shells. There are only two, of course, but there appear to be six. This performance creates a disagreeable distraction, and I have seen many a duck get away because of it".
I know that there are ways to catch ejected shells, as explained in detail by Michael McIntosh in SHOOTING & SHOTGUNS -- THREE, page 103, but McKenty's objections to the ejector gun may have been more common in the earlier days of sport water-fowling and reflective of a rarified and waning sense gentlemanly hunting deportment.
It is an interesting 1916 DH Parker, and I look forward to hearing more about it.
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