40 inches......
 

This past evening, on my way to a rendezvous, I stopped over a friends house who had just come into possession of a Hopkins and Allen 12 gauge single shot. That in itself wouldn't garner much attention but the damn thing has a 40 inch factory barrel! It was the longest I'd personally ever seen on a hardware store single and I was powerful impressed. Gun was tight and in good shape, what appeared to be laminated steel for the tube, showed quite a bit of case color, bore bright and pit free. Very heavy, massive wall thickness, really a painfully cool old fowler. The one draw back was it had a home made butt stock which was a trifle crude. My friend is pretty handy with the rasp and thinks he can shape it up a bit to where it doesn't look too bad. Of course the standard 4 inches of drop at heel and 13 inch LOP was present. He loves a project and once it's done my guess is the old girl might come into my possession.

Anybody ever seen one longer?



DLH

Destry, my brother has a 42 inch Marlin pump....hand's down the longest shotgun barrel I've come across and on a pump it's a handful .

only in flintlocks - around 52/54 was the longest Rifle and about 60 in a fowler

i have heard of "long toms" in the 38 40 inch range but not longer

Chris,

Wow! Is it a factory length barrel? I've seen a few over the years that had an extension added on them to make a turkey / spot shoot gun. Sometimes it's very well done and hard to spot, you just see a light ring of slightly different colored blue were the weld is.


Destry

Pretty sure its factory,I was telling another friend about the gun years ago and he could remember himself and another guy from town heading to the city on the bus to pick up new guns for Turr hunting (Common Murre) ,he picked up a 36 inch Cooey single shot and his buddy picked up one of those Marlins with the 42 inch barrel ,I re blued the barrel for my brother years ago the was no sign of a join of any type ...if the opportunity arises I'll get a photo for you .

On a side note ,I know the experts say the barrel has no effect on killing distance in a shotgun,but I have personally witnessed that gun kill a sitting rabbit stone dead between 70-80 yards(paced off )...you would swear there was a second shooter on a grassy knoll that made the kill shot !

destrey theres a long tom hanging on the wall in corinth miss. thats got a 48 inch barrel on it..ive looked at this gun several times over the years.its a 12 ga breach loader ive tried to buy it several times the owner says he will sale it to me when he finds one with longer barrel.. and ive seen 2 long tom 16 ga with 40 inch barrels....hope you wind up with that long barrel gun... charlie

On page 1027 of The Parker Story is a picture (lower left) of a young man holding a DH 10 ga. with 40 inch barrels.
James

I've handled one of the famous 8 gauge 40 inch guns, quite the fowling piece.

DLH

i may have dreamed this but was not there a parker built with 50 plus inches built for somebody..im pretty sure i read this on this site a few years back... charlie

Destry ,I have a Model 37 Winchester with a 44 " Barrel 12 Extra Full ! Since the Purchase ,I have had the scope removed ,the Barrel reblued , a correct plastic Butt Plate and the wood refinished ,quite a unique looking piece !

If it had a scope on it I'd say definitely a spot / turkey shoot gun. Do you think the barrel is a factory model?


Destry

The Barrel looks really good but it appears to be added to ,If you really Eye Ball it up you can see a slight imperfection in the Tube ! I don't believe it is Factory Original at all ,I think like you that it is a Turkey Shoot gun , It's neat though and Shoots Great ! I picked it up at an auction for a couple hundred Bucks ,just couldn't pass it up ! I will take a couple of Pics. of it refinished ,Really Nice ! Russ

Daryl Middlebrook has a nice 8gauge with 40-1/2" barrels and it,s a Parker! Talking about reaching out and touching!

So sorry it took so long Destry (i haven't forgotten about the duck trawl either)
but here's the 42 inch Marlin...sorry about the phone pic's ,it's all I had

I saw one of these 42" Marlins for sale on a website a few yrs back. I was pretty tempted but didn't bite.

I won.der if when punt guns were outlawed, some of the gun companies at the time decided to offer these 'long toms' as an alternative

Claimed advantages for the Marlin 120 MXR were longer sight radius, better balance and quieter. I can't imagine Marlin's noise reduction was anyway near that claimed for the Diller Quiet gun or the Metro subsonic gun extension tubes.

http://www.dillerdesign.com/quietgun

my dad owned one of these marlin long barrel guns years ago...i thought that thing was the the ulitimate gun for a while...first tried it on doves itwould kill them far out but when your setting under a bush tryinh to stay out of the heat on aseptember afternoon that long barrel is hard to get handle setting in the bushes...got tangled up with all the limbs...also that long barrel is hard tobring up quick on a big gobbler that youve met up with stalking thru the woods yep not a feather touched... charlie

If you have the ID & Ser book, and some time on your hand, look up these Parker guns and you will note that they all have one thing in common...... yep... 40 inch barrels. Also note that there are groups where several were made together (assuming sequential serial numbers mean sequential manufacturing or all one order?). So, Parker made some long tom shotguns too. I wonder who bought these and why. There is probably an interesting story around the grouping of ser#'s too.

78062, 79479, 80371, 80372, 80373, 80374, 80375, 80565, 81121, 81880, 84703, 84704, 88112, 94277, 47641, 47642, 47643, 47644, 47645, 49042, 53094, 53623, 53624, 53626, 53627, 58540, 60064, 62811, 65865, 65995

Market Hunting

Allen,

A punt gun was a literal cannon that was mounted on the front of a small boat to shoot into flocks of waterfowl on the water. A standard load in the larger ones was about a pound of shot and an equal volume of black powder. They have nothing to do with any sporting gun that was ever made no matter the length of barrel. When you hear people speak of 4 and 8 gauge guns as "punt guns" you're talking to somebody who knows nothing about the subject.


Destry

Thanks destry, good points. I'm familiar with punt guns. My point or rather question was when the feds outlawed the use of punt guns (and market hunting toook a dive) did the gun manufacturers revert to these 8 and 10 gauge guns as more or less a substitute (recognizing the huge difference between a real punt gun and these). I think your answer is no. The 8 and 10 gauge guns were not developed as a substitute.

Punt guns, any shoulder gun larger than 10 gauge, and the sale of migratory birds, were all outlawed at the same time in 1918. Once the sale of game was outlawed, there would have been no reason to have punt guns or any substitute as fowling became a "sport" and not a "trade". These long barrel guns were once thought to "shoot harder" and "carry further" than shorter barrel models, that was the reason they existed. I like a long barrel gun myself, but they have no real advantage in the field other than the confidence they create in ones mind.

Destry

Also we must remember that when black powder was the propellent of choice longer barrels were needed to obtain a complete burn.

I'd say black powder was long out of use by the time this Marlin hit the market.

DLH