A Curious Thing

[Richard LeStage]

Last spring I acquired a wonderful PH 16 ga with 28" Twist barrels. I was shooting it for the first time at an RGS shoot in June and a curious thing happened. After shooting two rounds (RST 2-1/2") at the fifth station, the gun was frozen shut. The top lever wouldn't budge. Try as I might, I couldn't open the gun. So I finished the shoot sharing my son's gun. At the end of the day it still wouldn't open. The next morning I was prepared to take it to a gunsmith to deal with it, but before I started I tried it one more time, and it opened! In casual conversation with other shooters I know, a few suggestions were floated: 1. Those old Parkers were not designed to shoot a lot of rounds in a short amount of time and maybe the heat expanded certain metal parts to cause the problem. 2. Sometimes one or both firing pins don't retract. 3. The old gun was dirty inside and gummed up with gooey old lubricants. Has anyone out there ever run into this curious thing before? By the way, in October I used this gun in ME, NY, WI, MN and the UP and it has not happened again.