All these years, cheapening the sport? Who knew?
“Hunting becomes with time - if you love hunting - less a way of gaining distance from our lives than it does immersion into life. Attempting to understand completely what is essentially a visceral experience seems to cheapen the act. To me, carrying a clunky automatic or pump seems to cheapen it even more.” — Robin Lacy
By KW
Wow, pretty hard on us common folks, huh?
In an otherwise nicely crafted essay about his love of double-barrels in a recent Gray’s Sporting Journal, Robin Lacy lumps those of us who carry auto-loaders and pumps into a lower class of hunters. Even more, he says we’re bad for the sport.
Well, shucks, I’ve been carrying “clunky automatics” for most of my hunting life. Never knew I was doing so much damage.
I’ve been at it about 48 years now, ever since I started with that new Stevens single and moved on, within a year or two, to the 20 gauge Remington Model 1148 that had been given to our family as a thank-you gift from a group of Sioux Falls hunters.
It was a good-looking gun at the start, if you are the type of lower-class clod who tolerates guns with single barrrels and shell-ejection mechanics. I do. So did my dad, whose favorite was an old, too-heavy Remington Model 11 that he shot like a double, by rarely loading more than two shells.
But he liked the heft of it, the way it swung and the hard, heavy “ka-da-chunk” of the auto-loader mechanism. I still shoot that old Model 11 sometimes, to hear that familiar sound and feel the solid buck of the past against my shoulder.
And while I’ve played around with side-by-sides and shoot a Ruger over-under sometimes, my consistent scattergun of choice is the 1148. It’s a beat-up version of its former self, after half a century of hard use. But it works, always, and it shoots where I point it, reliably.
I find it hard to imagine that the simple act of shooting a gun I know and believe in, one full of personal history and memorable shots, could be bad for hunting.
And I can’t imagine that somebody out there tromping around with a venerable old Model 12 is doing much damage to the sport, either.
Can you?
October 25th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
I like the artistry, craftsmanship, and aesthetics of a fine double. There is a pride of ownership in them. In the modern age of pumps, fast cycling autos, and pistol grips, they can indeed create a perception of slower, calmer sophistication in the pursuit of game. Lacy is not wholly inaccurate, just incomplete. A little narrow in scope, too.
However, the absence of such arms in the hands of hunters shouldn’t create the opposite impression. Pumps and autos are the overwhelming majority of production and sales, with the Remington 870 Express and Mossberg 500 leading the pack. Who is buying that one? The Walmart Hunter, who has ~$200 to spend. That guy (or gal) is likely hunting in blue jeans and a trucker hat. I wonder what Lacy truly felt about that, too.
Sadly, Lacy’s opinions are shared by others, and in other ways. There are those that assert that guns made of polymers, and finishes other than a deep, rich, blue, are blights upon the shooting industry. As with doubles, I like the craftsmanship of a deeply blued, premium 1911, but when John Q goes to work on pepper poppers, paper, or perps, he’s doing so with his Glock. Like the 870, the plastic wunderpistole is the industry leader in production and performance. Lacy probably doesn’t like that, either.
Lacy’s comments are Zumbo-esque in their snobbery and buffoonery. Like Zumbo, he seems to be out of a touch as well. The effect that hunters have upon their sport, and its perception to the population as a whole, should be determined by their behavior in the field.
Lacy’s full article is here. Apparently he died in August.
http://grayssportingjournal.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1616&Itemid=78
October 25th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
You dance with the one who brought you to the dance!
Not to say you can’t dance with another partner once in awhile, but we still need to stay true to who and what got us started I think.
How on earth would there be something wrong with using a pump? Or even an auto, with only two shells?
I guess if we were really high brow, we’d all go back to single shots or bows and arrows, exclusively.
Next they will tell us we must use a fly line to properly catch a fish!
October 25th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
KW I just got around to reading the Lacy piece a couple of hours ago. I came away thinking a little different then you did. I don’t think he is an elitist, but I do think he is a purest. It sounds like he thinks the same about the doubles as you do about your autoloader. Both of you think about the history of the guns you are shooting just about every time you pick them up. You know, the first time you shot the gun, where you have hunted with that gun, and who you have hunted with. My favorite part of the whole thing was when he was talking about being in London at Holland and Holland buying shells. I don’t think he was bragging, he was just telling us that it didn’t matter where he was on the road in life, or where he was going. It was where he started that made him love the doubles like he does. “You knew, without asking, that no one working there knew anyone called Bubba. ” For me that about said it all.
October 26th, 2009 at 11:27 am
I wouldn’t trade my Browning 5A, that I bought in 1957, for nothing. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I can,t understand critizing a fellow hunter for his beholding. Just love that old faithful Browning
Lewie: That Browning 5 is a sweet gun. I’d be-holding one now, if I could….K.W.
October 26th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
We all have our own conceits I think–some not necessarily based on reason. My father owned the following twelve gauges: side-by-side, an over-and-under, a single shot, a Remington pump and an Ithaca pump. He also owned a single shot 4.10 and a 20 gauge pump. The two double barrels and the two single shots were for trap shooting, and the pumps were for hunting. Automatic firearms of any kind were not even open for discussion.
October 26th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
The nostalgia and connection with the past has value for many. The key is to not be married to it, to the exclusion of all else. More importantly, to not assign or imply negative attributes to those who don’t value it in the same way, as Lacy did.
I like the idea of starting new hunters (and shotgun shooters in general) on singles. Doing so helps reinforce the value of that one shot, which is often the only shot they’ll get. Doubles are a logical progression, and the balance of catalogs thereafter.
The Benelli autoloaders are capable of putting every round from their magazine in the air before the first hull hits the ground. Smooth as glass, there’s no “ka-da-chunk” in them, just mechanical efficiency. The appreciation of them is for their efficiency rather than their nostalgia or aesthetics.
All should be welcomed to the hunt.
Sport: If you could have just one shotgun (shudder, I know) for all your scattergunning needs, what would it be? K.W.
October 26th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
“Sport: If you could have just one shotgun (shudder, I know) for all your scattergunning needs, what would it be? K.W.”
Base gun would be a 12ga Remington 870P, with accessory barrels in 14, 18, and ~26″ lengths. A bead on the 14, high-vis sights (aperture, preferably) on the 18, and a rib with a bead on the 26.
If I could have only one complete unit, it would be the same 870P base gun with a ~24″ barrel.
Sport: Excellent choice. But wouldn’t you worry that you were cheapening the sport? K.W.
October 26th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
I really don’t want to add to this, BUT when you went out for birds in England with a pump the Brits just thought you were some sort of low life. I’ll take my side by side 16ga anyday for bird hunting altho’ I did buy a Red Label a couple of years ago. It sits in a corner most of the timel.
DES: You mean all those cagey, wild birds those Brit are accustomed to working so hard behind good dogs to flush and shoot? But I would like to see that 16 gauge double sometime. Sounds like a great gun. K.W.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Let’s see Lacy take a rooster out of the air at 20 yards with a recurve and wooden shaft. What’s that, Robin? Yeah, didn’t think so.
October 30th, 2009 at 12:00 am
I tend to think that Lacy forgets the origin of the firearm species as it were. Like all the rest of this blog, the elitism that Lacy seems to generate is bothersome but understandable. What is missing in all the discussion is the fact that shotgun ammunition- the stuff that is fired in all these uniquely designed weapons,- has remained nearly the same since smokeless powder and non-corrosive primers were introduced more than 50 years ago. There is as much tradition and sporting nobility in the Belgian Browning A5 as there is in the Savage/Stevens double that was popular when I was growing up in the 50’s. The guages shoot nearly all the same stuff and the ballistic advantage of one over the other is insignificant. As for me, I like the feel and performance of a stack barrel but if a guy wants to stuff an extra one or two shells in the magazine of an auto-loader and hunt along side me and my dog, I could care less. I have come to understand that the other two “extra” shells in the mag aren’t likely to be used anyway simply because the bird is to far out of range and if a nimrod chooses to shoot those two extra shells at a departing bird at those extended ranges, I’ve got a lot of confidence that he won’t do a lot of damage to anything except his ego. And he deserves that.
John: Well said. Remind me: What kind of double do you shoot? K.W.
November 6th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
kw:
I have several that I’ve accumulated over the years but my current favorite is a 20 guage Browning Citori f/m straight stock that I’ve managed to lengthen just a bit with a 1 1/4 inch super magnum recoil pad. I have a couple of Italian guns, one a twin trigger that I shot for years but have decided that I don’t care for the recoil and the fact that it tends to chew up my middle finger with the trigger guard if I don’t wear gloves. I’ve also got an Italian 3 1/2 inch job that I bought a few years back at a bargain price thinking that it would do the job pretty well on big geese over decoys on the water on Oahe. I also thought it might have a turkey application as well but I discovered that it patterns most loads like horseshoe nails out of a civil war mortar so I’ve kept it in the gun cabinet hoping that the next time I shoot it, it will somehow have straightened itself out. One of these days, I might just trade that thing for a European Side by Side that fits. Havala Babcock had a great influence on me in my early days!!!!