Mr. Hillis I am in total agreement with you.

Deer drives was THE southern hunting sport from the decades before the Civil War up until fairly recently. While I hate to see traditions die, I agree with Stan too and also know of two accidents, one fatal, in deer drives from the last few years. My brother shut it down on Dad's place for safety reasons alone and it is now still hunting only.

Those are $500-700 guns all day long. Some sellers are just crazy.

Ive recently found a great deal on a nice old 10 gauge if its still for sale in the next week or two I am going to try and get it .

Even if I found one of those 10 ga 3.5" doubles for cheap I couldnt bring myself buy a double without a splinter forend and from what Ive been told you cant reshape a beavertail into a splinter .

There is no good reason why you can't.





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From what Ive seen discussed on another forum the claim was it changes how the forend and latch comes into contact with the barrels . That it would make the forend metal closer to the lug on the barrel so the way the forend latches would need to be modified. I dont see how as you would be removing wood from the outside of the forend not inside of it .

Ive been reading and it seems one of the better 10 ga 3.5s are the AYA ones and they made a lightweight 10 ga magnum double 9lbs . The action is rounded and not as square as you see on most of these guns .

Honestly though I really like the 2 7/8 10 gauges Ive owned and hunted with . A 1 1/8oz load in a 10lb gun is probably one of the softest shooting shotguns you could hunt with .

And ammo availability doesnt really matter much when it comes to ordering 10 ga RST loads vs 10 ga 3.5" shells off the shelf . As locally all you will ever find is steel BB loads which I wouldnt shoot through one of these fixed full choked Spanish Magnums .

Maybe someone has done this already but I plan to do it soon...

Remove the forend latch from both a splinter and from a beavertail and lay them on a flat surface and measure the height of each to determine if the difference is significant in shaping a beavertail wood to a splinter.






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Remember that there is another limiting factor when considering converting a beavertail to a splinter. One must first determine if the wood on the beavertail was fitted closely enough to the barrels underneath. While removing wood from the beavertail's exterior will certainly turn it into a splinter, one may well end up with very unsightly gaps between the wood and the barrels because the wood on the beavertail was never fitted as closely in those areas.

It takes close scrutiny to determine this. One way, as a quick check told me by a friend, is too remove the b.t. forend, put a thin layer of Play-Doh inside it, and replace the forend on the gun, latching it completely. This will press the Play-Doh into whatever thickness the clearance is in all those critical locations.

SRH

There Certainly IS.

And with a Parker, it is impossible. Other makers... maybe.

I suppose some gunsmithing could be done to the forend latch to get a better fit if one were to change it to a splinter ? I guess it would also depend on just how thin you want it to be . I wonder if you could take measurements off a particular splinter forend to use for the inspiration for the redesign then work the forend latch to fit how you want it ?

Probably not economical on one of these 10 ga Spanish guns but I always thought it would be neat to take one and reshape the wood to look more like a classic double .

Charlie I have been reading about wildfowling over in the U.K , probably the only place where 8 bores still see serious hunting . Apparently there was a company called Greylag in the U.K boring out these heavy 10 bores to make modern 8 bore boxlocks . They used a Kestrel 10 bore as the base gun .

Muzzles still have some thickness to them surprisingly , though if they are reproofed after boring I would think they are stout .