View Full Version : Vintagers Shoot
Clark McCombe
07-20-2025, 01:28 AM
Last weekend Beverly and I attended our first Vintager Shoot.
What great fun! And they don't keep score! Wonderful to see and talk vintage guns.
We met up with fellow Parker member Bob Lyons shooting a beautiful 16 ga hammer gun.
Hope to meet more PGCA members at the August events.
Garry L Gordon
07-20-2025, 06:14 AM
Not keeping score is one of life’s greatest pleasures.
Phil Yearout
07-20-2025, 11:03 AM
They don't keep score?! Isn't that unamerican?
Clark McCombe
07-20-2025, 11:20 AM
These days- “everybody gets a trophy.”
But of course I kept score and there is no one more competitive than Beverly.
Daryl Corona
07-20-2025, 11:33 AM
Looks like a good time Clark. What shoot was this?
Clark McCombe
07-20-2025, 12:10 PM
Great fun,
Good people.
There were a few rules .
No denim, no camo.
Only sxs. I’m in farm clothes all the time so it’s nice to put on a tie to shoot my classy Parker.
Next month at on the 15th at Addieville
And a driven bird or driven “clay bird” shoot the following week in Vermont.
That is supposed to be really something and they do keep score for that one.
Reggie Bishop
07-20-2025, 12:52 PM
Clark tell us what you and Beverly were shooting. Grade, gauge, etc
Clark McCombe
07-20-2025, 02:19 PM
I shot a 12 ga vh imp cyl, mod and. Vh 16 more or less sane choke - both 28”
Beverly : 12 ga ghe 26” skt and skt 20 ga full and full
Bill Murphy
07-20-2025, 04:38 PM
The original Vintagers organization professed "no scoring" in their credo. Good luck with that.
Dean Romig
07-20-2025, 05:11 PM
The original Vintagers organization professed "no scoring" in their credo. Good luck with that.
True Bill - It was for shooting Gentlemen and their Ladies.
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allen newell
07-20-2025, 06:25 PM
Ladies shoot? Lol
bob lyons
07-20-2025, 09:23 PM
Although I was not dressed in the proper attire. I got a pass this time however next time i don’t think I will get the pass.
The guns I used were okay 16 gauge Parker hammer gun and a 12 gauge Parker DH hammer gun.
Most of them were shooting English guns.
It was a lot of fun and nice group.
The other group.
Still can’t figure how to turn the photos
Stan Hillis
07-21-2025, 07:31 AM
Why would someone not keep score? It is a means of comparison for an individual to track his/her progress, or lack thereof. To further that line of thought, why would anyone go to the effort to shoot targets and not do what they can to improve?
This is not intended to start a debate on the merits of scoring or not scoring, it's just that the concept is just so foreign to me. If one wants to keep up with what percentage they shot it is much easier to allow a squad member to score for them than trying to concentrate on shooting the targets and keeping up with hits/misses yourself.
Maybe we're just crude rednecks, but a lot of the fun my shooting buddies and I have are ribbing each other and trying to implant a thought into the other's mind to miss. We are very competitive, but are close friends who would have each other's back whenever needed.
Reggie Bishop
07-21-2025, 07:47 AM
I am sure that the individual shooters kept score of how they shot. If they had a good day or a not so good of a day. I think this was just a shoot where there were no "winners", no scoreboard etc. Just a fun event without the rules of competition. At least that is how I view it.
Randy G Roberts
07-21-2025, 07:53 AM
Still can’t figure how to turn the photos
Here ya go Bob....
Dean Romig
07-21-2025, 08:05 AM
I keep a scorecard but I've never shot well enough to turn my card in... but we have fun and try to improve. I simply don't shoot often enough to be especially good at it.
At least the grouse in VT don't point at me and slap their thighs guffawing at me when I miss... or at least I don't think they do...:shock:
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Bill Murphy
07-21-2025, 08:57 AM
I, personally, get little pleasure from shooting with no scoring if I am paying an entry. I was raised from preteens in competition shooting and it is just "in my blood". I do sometimes shoot sporting clays with a geriatric group with no scoring. However, there is little point in scoring because we shoot everything from .410 to 10 gauge and several of us are in our eighties.
Larry Stauch
07-21-2025, 10:11 AM
Those types of shoots are a lot of fun. That first picture of your wife with the target off the end of her barrel is great, as is the follow up picture of the shot. The thing that surprised me the most about the participants, of some of the shoots that I have attended, was how much a lot of those people knew about their guns.
CraigThompson
07-21-2025, 01:39 PM
I always keep score for myself at skeet , trap , sporting etc . Heck I even keep score at pheasant partridge tower shoots at each peg shots vs hits . I shot skeet/trap to darn long so if I do t keep score and or average it doesn’t feel right .
Phil Yearout
07-21-2025, 04:17 PM
Everybody ought to do a few things now and then without keeping score; it's relaxing and good for the soul.
Stan Hillis
07-21-2025, 06:18 PM
Not everyone. We are not all wired alike by The Almighty.r
Allen Peterson
07-22-2025, 04:42 PM
I enjoy shooting and always kept score and was very competitive when I was young same when hunting how much game in the bag. now I got rid of my competition Guns away and only shoot antiques and a couple or more modern SXS now Its about watching the dogs the guns and being outdoors and the fellowship. I still try my best but even bad days are fun. one thing I never picked up on was the playing dress-up part! I think a tartan wool shooting vest and cargo shorts is about as correct as a torch job on a Parker. but thats just me.
john pulis
07-23-2025, 07:42 AM
“To each his own.”
John Davis
07-24-2025, 07:16 AM
My competition Guns are “antiques”. And admittedly I’m way over obsessed with scores and averages. Probably not healthy.
Love the pictures of Beverly, btw. Impressed with her ability to keep her head on the stock.
Dean Romig
07-24-2025, 07:24 AM
She uses Velcro patches John.
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Bob Brown
07-25-2025, 08:58 PM
I'm not surprised they don't keep score. Think of the place and times that they are trying to emulate. The large shoots in the late 19th and early 20th centuries on the European and British Isles rich or nobility's estates were huge social occasions. Men, women, and older children would kill for an invite. Everyone shot. More business was done, fine guns admired, introductions made, gossip passed, and marriages arranged than anywhere else. When foreign leaders visited they didn't take them golfing, they arranged a shoot. Other than a small group of the top shooters it could be considered bad form to asked how someone shot. For most it was probably secondary to the occasion.
Dean Romig
07-25-2025, 10:07 PM
Well said Mr. Brown.
.
Stan Hillis
07-26-2025, 06:40 AM
Maybe that's the problem with me then, I'm not trying to emulate anyone, rather just be the best I can be.
Garry L Gordon
07-26-2025, 06:47 AM
Maybe that's the problem with me then, I'm not trying to emulate anyone, rather just be the best I can be.
No problem with you, Sir. Just keep competing and keeping score...and taking those speedy dove with your long barreled .410s.:bowdown:
I'll keep practicing the shots I have trouble with using Elaine's hand thrown clays...and keeping track of my shooting while hunting (not sure why, I think I've been doing it so long that it's now in my DNA).
The vintage gun world is a large universe and accommodates all of us.
Clark McCombe
07-26-2025, 07:15 AM
We are part of the generation that learned to drive a standard transmission and placed a collect call with a rotary phone. The first gun I shot eas a single shot .410 where had to be careful when I pulled the hammer back.
Call it nostalgia.
I think we were lucky to have learned what we did.
I somehow am trying to hang on to some of that.
It makes me happy.
Phil Yearout
07-26-2025, 09:26 AM
Please note that I was not advocating never keeping score; just that once in a while it’s ok not to. JMHO.
Stan Hillis
07-26-2025, 09:40 AM
No problem with you, Sir. Just keep competing and keeping score...and taking those speedy dove with your long barreled .410s.:bowdown:
I'll keep practicing the shots I have trouble with using Elaine's hand thrown clays...and keeping track of my shooting while hunting (not sure why, I think I've been doing it so long that it's now in my DNA).
The vintage gun world is a large universe and accommodates all of us.
When I was a kid I was blessed to have a very wealthy gentleman who was a friend of my family, and a neighboring landowner. He planted for doves and raised and released quail way back in the early 60s. He would graciously invite me on his big dove shoots with all grown men. I'd be the only adolescent.
My Dad owned a huge country store which stocked and sold everything needed to live, including ammunition. He wanted to foster my shooting abilities and would give me shotgun shells for dove shoots. His only caveat was "Don't waste 'em." I took that to heart and would be constantly counting my doves taken in comparison to my shots taken. I'd return the unused shells to my Dad, who would always ask me how well I shot. I was always ready with an answer.
Probably boring information to most everyone but I do believe that instilled a competitive shooting nature in me, and made me a better shot. I am grateful to my Dad for his generosity to me . . . . we weren't affluent people.
I would've never made a good poker player, I guess. I couldn't have overcome the old adage "Never count your money when you're sitting' at the table" ("there'll be time enough for counting, when the dealin's done.").
allen newell
07-26-2025, 12:59 PM
I tell my girlfriend not to keep score. Lol
Steve McCarty
07-26-2025, 01:38 PM
"Operator, I'd like to make a long distance station to station call to my grandmother in Bucklin, Kansas. The number is: 21". Then I'd hang up and wait for the call to be placed. When it was the phone would ring. I'd pick it up and my grandmother would say, "Hello". You could also place a person to person call, which was more expensive. In that case the operator would ask the party you were calling, if they wanted to accept a call from so and so, so the receiving party would know who was calling. The operator would ring you back and tell you that "Your party is waiting". Things have changed, huh. Telephones didn't aways work very well and sometimes people had to almost scream into the handset to be heard. Telephones came into general use in the late 1870s. So Billy the Kid probably did make a phone call. Whatt Earp to, but he died in 1929 and by then everyone had a phone. they were party lines, but they were common.
Phil Yearout
07-26-2025, 02:22 PM
I used to shoot pasture clays with my two brothers-in-law and my father-in-law; they're all gone now. A cheap hand-cocked trap but we tried our best to simulate a shot at a bird; it would even throw doubles. Gun down, two shells in your gun, and there was always somebody backing you up if you missed with both. Those guys were some of the best wing shots I've ever seen; we'd congratulate the good shots and rub it in on the misses, but we never kept score.
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