New to me VH 20
 

I went to New Hampshire grouse hunting and a Parker followed me home. Reportedly a Turnbul restoration. Looked brand new until I dragged it around the grouse woods for 4 days.

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Congrats on the new gun. I really like the trigger guard!

Now how did that one get by the New Hampshire Boys:cuss:

It slipped into New Hampshire from Canada.

Barrel length?

28 inch, skeet in, skeet out reported (slip in galazan gauge indicates about that) dac 1 5/8, dah 2 3/4, 14 1/4 lop. Fits me great except lop. ( I haven’t found one with a 15 inch lop yet ;-) )

Great looking Gun Dan , Congrats ! How was the Partridge Hunting ? Any Woodcock up that way , our place usually gets some flight birds in but so far all I have been doing is walking my 20 Gauge ! Makes for easy cleaning !

Thanks Russ. I carried it most of the week. I think we’re going to be hunting buddies. Grouse numbers are down this year where we were hunting but we moved a few every day. We did have pretty good woodcock numbers but not many flight birds yet. We heard there were a fair amount of flight birds 50 miles north of us. The best cover we had was my little ES had 14 woodcock finds in just under 2 hours. We had another cover where one of the dogs 12 woodcock finds and 6 grouse finds in 90 minutes.

I'll tell you Dan ,if we moved Birds like that in my neck of the woods we would think we died and went to Bird Heaven !

The gun was not done by turnbull. I can tell you that.

Russ, We had quite a few 1-5 birds covers in five days of hunting. Only 2 covers all week though where the dog on the ground didn’t have a find.

The triggers should be blued on a VH up to a GH I believe

That’s right Gary. Also has some other non-correct features, like G grade checkering, but it fits me great and shoots where I’m looking. It’s not a collector but it is going to share some time in the woods and on the skeet range with me.

My 1930 vintage VH 20-gauge, metal refreshed by Bachelder, came back to me with polished triggers.

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Correct. Any hammerless Parker of any vintage below DH would have nitre blued triggers. Any grade DH and above would be nickel plated. And gold plated in the very high grades.

There really is no exception to this except for in the event of a special order. Which I would think that IF a special request was made, it would be to plate the triggers as to provide additional corrosion resistance.

The devil is in the details.

Dan, you and I like the same type of guns, and that is a nice looking 20. Solid shooters. No need for "original" condition or configuration. If I like the gun I'll buy and shoot the gun. No need to keep it in a safe and pull it out a few times a year just to ogle. Cocked, locked and ready to rock, Doc!!

Not knocking it. bought a GHE couple of years ago, thought the blue triggers should be nickle plated so I pulled them and polished them and thought about nickle plating them. THEN I asked the forum, got two pages of the correct info, theyre back in blue.
Good hunting,

That was my gun . Chris Dawns did the work

Do you mean Chris Dawe?

Yes. Turns out Chris Dawe did the woodcock inlay and some very minor engraving upgrades and while he had the gun he and the owner decided to upgrade the checkering to the G grade style.

We are finding woodcock in the quail fields at Crane and Myles Standish, also in the pheasant fields. Consistently.

That is interesting. I thought they came and are now gone but maybe not. I assume the locations you mention are in Mass.

Yes Gary, both locations are in Mass and they are WMA's