This may be an exercise in hair-splitting, but here goes...
The game of "shooting 'round the clock" (later the field was redesigned because a neighbor's livestock was coming under indiscriminate shot fall), later (1929) to be named "Skeet", was being developed in the teens and was perfected in the mid-twenties and was catching on pretty well in the ranks of upland shooters. During the years before Parker Bros. made the decision to offer a dedicated 'Skeet Gun' a number of guns were ordered with certain features, including more open chokes, to be used specifically for quail, grouse and woodcock and the game of Skeet.
The Parker Story addresses the introduction of the first dedicated skeet guns but I don't believe choke stampings of "Skeet In" and "Skeet Out" are necessarily the only way to truly define a skeet gun.
William Harnden Foster, "father of skeet" shot open choked Parkers all during the development phases of the game of skeet and even well after the game was renamed and may not ever have owned a Parker stamped with Skeet In and Skeet Out on the barrel flats.
|