Wow, a bunch of heavy hitters there. Very cool Drew, thanks.

And most of them shot Parkers
Marshall and Merrill gave up their Cashmores and shot Parkers, as did Le Roy and Heikes who used Remington doubles at the 1901 GAH at Live Birds as Remington professionals.
Parmelee used a Parker at the 1900 GAH, but had previously also been a Remington professional.
Guns used: Capt. Thos. Marshall - Parker, R.O. Heikes - Parker, W.R. Crosby - Smith., C.W. Budd – Parker, J.S. Fanning - Smith, J.A.R. Elliott - Winchester Repeater, Fred. Gilbert – Parker, F.S. Parmelee - Parker, C.M. Powers - Parker, Edward Banks - Winchester Repeater, E.H. Tripp - Parker, Richard Merrill - Parker, and B. Le Roy Woodard - Parker.

It seems likely there was some form of inducement from Parker Bros.

More here
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...w/edit?tab=t.0

It's not much different than today's top shooters. Perazzi, Kreighoff, Beretta just to name a few of the guns that sponsor them only today's shooters are shooting O/U's. To me the biggest difference is the crowds they drew back then, similar to our sporting events today. The promotional incentive hasn't changed.

It can happen though. Just out of graduate school in 1972, I traded an Ithaca M51 Trap with a sawed off barrel (cousin's wife's gun that she shot at a dove with a corn stalk in the barrel) for a 1948 Ithaca 16ga field grade with a high grade stock (finishing up guns with available parts). I had been thinking of a classic double and they were cheap at the time. Took it out for its first trip and hit not one thing. I patterned it and both barrels were dead 18" high at 30 yds. This with a gun with 2-3/4" drop. It also had very light barrels. I thought a little and took a towel and wrapped around the center of the barrels. I was at an abandoned concrete plant near my house found a tough looking small tree that hat a vertical narrow V fork in a low limb. I put the barrel with the towel in the fork and bumped it hard on the top of the action. Three tries at this and it patterned perfectly. With light barrels it is easy to bend a set of doubles up or down. This went on to be my lifetime regular dove gun.

I knew nothing of Parkers at the time and hadn't seen pictures of them truing barrels in the factory. What prompted me to try (besides money) was I had a Weatherby gun catalog that showed a picture of a worker truing rifle barrels in their German factory. I figured if you could bend and adjust a rifle barrel in a press with a 4" handwheel crank, bumping a shotgun barrel enough to get a pattern right should be easy.

The same wouldn't work, of course, if you start with a straight barrel. Then the pattern would depend on distance.

That is an excellent book. Can't begin to tell you how many times I've read it cover to cover.

I have seen it done too, Harry. But, there's a difference in making a gun shoot to where you want it to by bending a barrel, as opposed to finding out why it's shooting that way in the first place.

Bending a barrel makes one shoot where you want it to at a specific range. Less than that distance and it's off, and more than that distance and it's off in the other direction.

My opinion is that, if possible, it's better to correct the issue on the back end of the gun than on the front end. Read Oswald's book and you might agree. Or not.

I have a straight grip, C Grade 12 gauge gun that was ordered for Capt A. W. Money by his son. He ordered an identical gun for himself.

Scroll down about 1/2 way here for a bit about "Blue Rock"
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...Y/edit?tab=t.0

He purchased a CH Parker SN 87238 in 1897 which he returned for his discount purchase price of $75 in Dec. 1898.
He later had two Parker pigeon guns stolen 7-1901; one was SN 90,635

Noel Money was 2nd at the 1st GAH at Live Birds in 1893, and prior to the 1895 GAH ordered a $400 AAH Parker SN 81122

Harold was a Winchester Rep and used a 1897

They may have been straight before you bent them. Bending them just made them shoot where you wanted them to. It's very easy to look down the bore of a barrel and tell if it's straight or not, by looking at the light rings that show up in the bore when the barrel is pointed towards a light source. If the series of rings are truly concentric then the barrel is straight. Making it "not straight" may be what you're doing, thereby making it shoot where you want it to.

I'm no stranger to shotgun barrel bending. But, when you've spent a lifetime shooting shotguns as I have and have never seen a gun shoot flat on which you were looking down the rib, it makes you question whether all these guns over all those years were "not straight", as you suggest.

Regardless, I agree that bending a barrel slightly can yield satisfactory results in moving the pattern up or down (in the case of a S X S). We just don't agree about whether or not those barrels were straight to begin with. I say the majority of them were.

Long ago a gunsmith friend showed me a way to accentuate those rings by cutting off a 20 gauge shell and removing the primer. Then inserting it in the muzzle of a 12 gauge like you were 'loading' it toward the breach end. When you point it at a light source the rings are starkly evident.