 
For the next million years or so there was little or no improvement in bird-hunting weapons until civilization staggered out of the Middle Ages into the era of Galileo, Shakespeare, and the Pilgrims, when some genius invented a scattergun called the blunderbuss. This firearm was as silly looking as its name, but could put a Thanksgiving turkey on the table a lot easier than our Neanderthal with his handful of rocks. The blunderbuss was an awkward weapon that seemed to require three arms to load and fire (powder, shot, and wadding had to be tamped down the barrel while the firing mechanism was ignited by a large hand-held match or flint), but it wasn’t long before somebody discovered it was excellent for shooting sitting ducks — a practice most people today condemn as unsportsmanlike. By the Age of Reason, however, discriminating huntsmen concluded that shooting birds while they were actually flying — or “on the wing” — could, by itself, be just as rewarding as putting meat on the table, and therefore began to demand refinements in their new fowling pieces. Incidentally, it was the development of firearms that rendered the sport of jousting obsolete, when it was discovered that bullets could penetrate a knight’s armor. Thus, the seventeenth-century sportsman acquired a new avocation at the expense of the other that, in the half millennium since, shows no signs of becoming outmoded — which brings me to the matter at hand, namely a comparison of fine shotguns. It is a topic that almost by definition devolves into matters of money and taste — subjects my grandmother always said should never be discussed in public, but here I am doing it anyway. Sportsmen invariably seek some “competitive edge,” and in the case of hunting this usually means having a better firearm. In days gone by, however, it was generally understood to mean having one that didn’t blow up in your face. The sportsmen back then were mostly wealthy, since in Europe and England, where wing shooting was born, most of the land was owned by members of the royalty and their friends, and the rest was owned by the king — and woe betide the poor sod caught poaching on the land of the king. Accordingly, these wealthy sportsmen demanded of their armorers shooting pieces not only superior in quality, accuracy, lightness, and balance, but distinguished in character befitting their self-perceived station in life. This translated into jazzing up the guns with all sorts of dainty inlays, jewels, carvings, and filigree that made them look more like a fairy’s wand instead of something that could blow an unsuspecting grouse into a handful of feathers. (Incidentally, no one back then would have ever thought to have his initials engraved onto his gun as many do today. Individual shotguns were so distinctive that such proof of ownership would have been considered at best superfluous and at worst tacky.) In the Victorian and Edwardian eras, amid the Industrial Revolution, great strides were made in the refinement of sporting guns, which had remained virtually unchanged for several hundred years. First was the invention of percussion caps on the hammers to replace the unreliable flintlocks. Next came a revolutionary lever-operated action mechanism that allowed the gun to be breech-loaded and mechanically recocked at the same time. Thus, instead of having to cram all the stuff down the muzzle, the hunter had merely to insert into the breech a self-contained shell consisting of shot, powder, and firing cap, snap the breech shut, and he was armed and ready. Following this was the so-called hammerless shotgun, which put the hammers inside the action for a cleaner, streamlined appearance. Then came the discovery of smokeless, high-explosive “nitro” gunpowder, which fortunately coincided with the invention of high-tensile “fluid” steel for the gun barrels. The weaker “twist” or Damascus steel that had been used till then works perfectly well in swords for chopping off heads in the Middle East, but is inclined to blow up when used in conjunction with nitro cartridges in shotguns. Soon came automatic ejectors, which, by ejecting spent shells into the air, saved the precious seconds it took a hunter to fumble them out with his fingers before reloading. More recently, the invention of insertable tubes has allowed changing the choke of the barrel with the twist of the wrist rather than having to purchase a separate set of barrels — or even a separate gun — for all five choke sizes. From the mid-1800s onward, the standard by which fine shotguns have been judged is the “London Best.” These are top-of-the-line models handmade by legendary London gunsmiths such as Purdey, Boss, and Holland & Holland, who are to guns today what Stradivari and Amati are to violins — and with a price to match: A Purdey or a Boss Best, for instance, can set you back as much as a Rolls-Royce, and what is more, you will have to wait several years to get it. The action on these guns — the mechanism that makes them work — is a mystifying assemblage of springs, levers, tumblers, sears, pins, bolts, and screws as intricate as anything inside the finest Swiss watch. The barrels are hand-turned of the very best steel, then blued and polished to a hue as deep and lustrous as a clear midnight sky, and the stocks and forends exquisitely carved and checkered and hand-oiled by the world’s best woodworkers. There are, of course, cheaper wannabes, guns on which the so-called engraving is either stamped by a rolling die or etched with acid instead of painstakingly done by hand, and the wood is cut and checkered by a machine — and shows it. But the gun engravers and stock carvers of England and the rest of Europe — and those of America, too, in its fine-gun heyday — can trace their lineage back to the woodworkers and metalworkers of the fabled medieval guilds. The engraving on a single gun, for instance, can take a thousand man-hours or more — and add $50,000 and more to its price! Right before World War II broke out, England’s King George VI, one of the world’s richest men, was asked about a Boss shotgun: “A Boss?” he responded. “A Boss gun? Bloody beautiful, but too damn expensive!” Likewise, the wood for stock and forepieces is selected from the highest-grade English or Turkish walnut, then sawed into blanks and cured for years. Fine grade walnut is so rare now that Best gun master stock builders go to extreme lengths decades ahead to secure particular trees that they have determined will provide the most beautiful wood. So it might be that if a Turk is sitting in his garden beneath a rare Circassian walnut tree, and a man from Beretta, Purdey, or Boss pops his head over the wall and makes him an offer he can’t refuse, this Turk will likely content himself with drinking his coffee in the sunshine instead of the shade, and use the stump for a stool. Walnut of this caliber can cost $300 or more per board foot, and at the end of the roughing-out process most of that winds up on the woodpile. |
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