24 Gauge???

[Steve Kleist]

I picked up a loaded 24 ga shotgun shell at a rummage sale recently. Are these that rare or have I just had my head in the sand? Steve Kleist Ely, MN

[Ben Yarian]

Not that rare in Europe. There is also a 32 gauge. I own a 24 gauge that was made in either France or Belguim. It was my grandfathers gun, and the gun my aunt started hunting with. Has external hammers and twist barells.

Ben
welcome to the forum.

[Destry L. Hoffard]

The American made ones are fairly scarce, I've had a couple over the years. I think the one I kept for my collection is a Winchester.

Destry

[Bill Murphy]

An early owner of the U.S. Cartridge Company 24 gauge VH, my fellow gun club member, Bob Hess, had a wooden case of 24 gauge Remingtons with the gun. After Bob's death, a friend handled the sale of his guns and sold the 24 gauge pretty quickly. The case of shells was not sold. The fellow would only agree to sell me the shells if I could figure out a way to repurchase the gun. I didn't think that was going to work out, so I lost track of the case of shells. I will know them if I ever see them. They were late production shells custom made for Hess by Remington. Bob was some kind of local distributor for Remington ammunition, or claimed to be. Maybe one of our Remington gurus like Art Wheaton or Ken Waite knows more about him. I bought Bob's 20 gauge VHE Skeet in its Abercrombie and Fitch case, but missed a fully optioned cased VHE 28 gauge with field chokes that was sold while I fiddled. A also bought a wonderful early postwar Browning Superposed that is now in the collection of someone we know.

[Bob Brown]

There must have been some 24 gauge guns around, at least in Canada. CIL wouldn't have stocked them commercially if there wasn't a market. The box says "made expressly for CIL", so they were likely imported from Britain. Canadian Industries Limited exported to the U.S. quite a bit in those days, so perhaps they filled the need there. This is from my father's collection, and the box may still be full if I remember right. I would have to do some digging to put a time frame on when or if they were importing the 24s. By the way Bill, I saw some CIL "Canuck" boxes the other day that you might find interesting. 28 gauge slugs and buckshot. I guess some people with 28 gauges were one gun men.
http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l276/Northof58/CIL24gaugebox.jpg

[Bill Murphy]

At the Chantilly, VA show this weekend, there was a full blue box of CIL 24 gauge, but the owner of the shells claimed he had just purchased them and would not sell them. It was a nice box identical to the top left box in your picture.