Season's Memoriam -- The Guns

[mobirdhunter]

Every season's end, in the empty days afterwards when the weather feels like we should be afield with gun and dog, I look back at my journal and the photos taken during the season. I always make the selection of what to shoot an important element in making plans for our hunts. Here are the guns from this past season. I hope they help you reminisce also.

1. I am not a dove hunter like some of our colleagues (my friend Stan Hillis comes to mind), but after a summer of no hunting, our dove opener is a sign of what's to come, the promise of the new year. I opened the year with this PH 12 that, in spite of its 3 inch drop, I shoot pretty well.

2. I love Fall turkey hunting. Here in Missouri we have the month of October which can be a glorious time to be in the woods. My gun of choice this year was a 1904 GH 12 with 30 inch Damascus barrels. It weighs just 7 pounds (and letters that way). I do a lot of walking to find Fall flocks to bust and call back in the young (and tender) birds of the year. A light gun with tight chokes is a good choice. This old girl has .040" in each barrel.

3. The last two weeks of October we spend in Northern Minnesota. My grouse gun is another 1904 gun, this one a DH 16 with 26 inch barrels. It's got enough heft at nearly 7 pounds to help me if I need to swing on a crosser, but most of the shooting in the tight stuff is on quick glimpses of fleeting grouse, or tight shots in the heavy brush on 'cock.

4. "Reggie's Gun" always makes every trip. This little 1918 CHE must have been ordered by me in a past life as it fits me better than any gun I have, and has all the features I could want (including an articulated front trigger!). It's my slump breaker.

5. This nice, old BHE has high dimensions, open chokes, and wonderful engraving which is nice to appreciate during the miles between chances.

6. Back to home covers for the heart of our season, my quail gun --a DHE -- proves that a 20 gauge, even with more open chokes, can do its duty on a nicely pointed, early season Iowa pheasant. Out in more open country, I like the longer barrels, and when the dogs do find a pheasant or two that will hold (not many!), it works out just fine.

7. I love twist barrels. I finally found an 0 frame 16 with dimensions I can shoot and in a condition just right to join my other twist pattern guns. I am close to a "Royal Flush" of twist barreled Parkers -- on the lookout for a 10 gauge. My 20 gauge and this 16 are great upland guns.

8. Bought for quail specifically, this 26 inch CSMC DE Special proved to be just the ticket for our North Missouri Bobs. It's balanced well and is not "whippy" for my chances at pointed birds, and it excels in the open country as well as in tight quarters when the birds hit the timber.

9. I finally found a Smith with this engraving -- my favorite of all Smith patterns. Hard to find a Smith that checked off all my criteria and that didn't have a single trigger. The only thing that would make it sweeter is if it were a 16 or 20. I bought it with pheasants in mind, and we took it to Northwest Missouri (pheasant country for my state). It was a late December trip, and the pheasants all got up in another time zone offering no chances, but even with chokes tighter than I prefer for quail, it did just fine when we came across coveys that still held for a point.

10. At the risk of being redundant, I end my thread with my quail gun pictured above doing its job on a pheasant. This is a quail gun, through and through. If I had only one gun, it would be this one. It has served me so well, and I've added many good hunts to its history, and hope to add many more.

May the off season be short, and next year be the best ever.