I was 15 years old when I last hunted with a percussion muzzleloading shotgun. My friend’s Dad had an English caplock double shotgun, and George and I hunted quite a bit with it using homemade black powder, newspaper for wadding and steel air rifle BB’s. Percussion caps couldn’t be had and we improvised with the centers of roll caps as used in the toy “cap guns” that were common back then. That shotgun was effective on rabbits and squirrels within 25 yards or so but that’s about all that kids on foot could hunt nearby.
I’ve had fond memories of those adventures and have been looking for a good lightweight percussion double-gun over a few years now. I connected at the Vintagers event last month. She’s a 14 bore with 29” barrels. Made in about 1845-50 by Joseph Harkom who was the premier Scottish gunmaker, located in Edinburgh. Bores are super clean showing proper cleaning after use over the past 170 years and she comes up and points really well.
Today was her first outing with me. Grouse have been tough here in northeastern PA for several years now but a friend and I managed to find three birds in some grape patches. Leaves are still pretty thick and two birds were basically just glimpses as they flushed. I heard the third bird flush and it crossed a opening in front of me to meet one ounce of 7’s. The smoke obscured the bird dropping but the trashing of feathers was pretty distinct. Man, what a rush after all those years.
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Harkom percussion double
Threaded Mode