Sunday, October 12, 2025

a man with a wing gun

 



As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.



My brother was a good shot. My Beloved Uncle was better than him. My Grandfather was beyond both. I was a good shot, never taught to shoot.........I just came up with my own computer brain method of firing weapons and my brother wondered how I ever hit anything.

I love shotguns. I should clarify, I love shotguns, because I am able to hunt with a dog and I love watching a dog work. I actually rarely kill game anymore. What I kill are some vermin which need to be destroyed to protect my livestock.

When I graduated high school, I purchased on sale a Remington 870 pump shotgun. I still have that gun. I used my graduation money for that purchase, my first one and it was a shotgun.

I have no time for semi auto guns. I like over and unders as I hit well with them, no time for doubles, but if I can not have a pump, I would chose a single shot. I do like single shots.

Where this comes from is I was reading Colonel Charles Askins work on wingshooting. A rather well communicated work on how to kill birds with various types of snap point or swings. The reason I'm sharing this as people should always have a shotgun, because as Mr. Askins stated in self defense, if you are in a gun fight, you bring a rifle or shotgun to get the job done. Revolvers are not what someone with intelligence chooses. That comes from a national pistol champion.

While hunting pheasants on some switch grass, I had a pheasant actually fly toward me at an angle and I flat ass missed 3 shots. Always puzzled me and the reality is as the pheasant closes it is actually flying faster and pattern is decreasing. That is a strange shot to be faced with and it only happened once.

I can still see another pheasant, and I shot a number of pheasants, because they are easy to hit. Most people are stunned by this huge, colorful and cackling bird appear, and they flat ass missed.
I found a majority of pheasants fly at a 30 degree angle. I just put out about one pheasant in front and birds die.
The pheasant in my memory was one flying away. I had that bird already in the pan as I confidently squeezed the trigger in taking my time. I was flat assed stunned as I missed and the bird flew away like having an empty box at Christmas.

Colonel Askins explains what happened and I am glad of it.  I know he was right as I can still see the shot from years ago. Sometimes when shooting birds going away, you shoot under them. You drop the barrel of the gun below them.....is a point as the front bead has to be on the bird and that means the barrel is under the bird. There is another factor in this. On easy shots you relax. On easy shots you drop the barrel or you lean forward which puts the barrel even lower. While I did not see the rushes take the charge, I know I shot under that bird. It did not help that I was shooting some of my brother's handloads.
We always shot Winchester AA cases, and he found the sweetest load with #2 lead, and yes I shoot 2 shot as I do not like biting into piles of small 6 shot which has to have a  bird almost shitting on your gun barrel. What he found was a light charge, an ounce and an eigth with a fast powder burn  that did not kick much, and Lord did that kill birds.....it also shot tight patterns, so you either hit the bird or you flat ass missed.

There was another time that four of us were blasting at a duck in a 60 mile an hour wind, it was flying into the wind and just hovering above us flying like hell. 12 shots, 12 misses............because with the wind deflection and the bird was really flying forward at 60 mph, we should have been shooting, moving our barrels for lead, and shooting maybe 12 feet ahead of the bird. That was 4 very good shots, my brother included and we all missed.


Colonel Askins ends with a description of my asshole brother with the title of "claimer". My brother was fused at 6 years old, when I was born. He never matured, so he was a kid all his life, and he was obsessed with hunting, fishing and trapping, and his thrill was to always out shoot, out trap and out fish me which he did often, like outrun me.....which when you consider why an 18 year old would find glory in outrunning a 12 year old, that was my brother, a real asshole.

As the Colonel relates, the claimer always shoots all the game, shoots the game on your side, you never hit anything and even shoots your birds on the way down and claims he shot first. It was not until I started hunting alone and started bringing home birds, that I realized.......I could hit birds.
Two cases come to mind. The first was my brother was home with his brother in law and we got into a pile of mallards. I mean there was ducks for all. I think we got like 30 of them plus. When the tally came, my brother shot most of them, 25, and his brother in law got 4 and I only got one after I said something like, "You son of a bitch, I know I shot that duck as I shot it on the set!" The brother in law also had shot on my side which is a big NO NO. And no he did not shoot on my side, my brother was just and asshole game hog 6 year old boy in a man's body.

So having enough of that shit, from that point on, whenever we crawled up on a slough, if there were more birds on his side, I had no etiquette, I pulled the shit he did, and I blasted first and into his pile of birds. He was dumbfounded by my aggression. I even shot shit on his side, just to do it. He was rattled by it all and frankly the asshole did start to stop being such an asshole all the time in hunting.

He was good shot. I enjoyed watching him shoot birds. He was gun safe, but that other stuff and being a chronic bitcher chewing my ass simply spoiled everything from fishing to hunting.


Granted on a different end, my sister the saint married a real asshole named Tom. I quit hunting with him as he was dangerous. He once picked up his shotgun, no safety on, and it went off as grass got on the trigger. The end of it though was when I wanted to dump his ass off in some mountain and just leave him there to hunt back or die due to going to some deer country and he shot his deer and announced he was going home. That is not what you do ever. So I ended up shooting a fawn to just get a deer.
His deer though was one where he shot a doe with my brothers 243 Winchester Model 70. So he hands me the rifle as the deer is gutted out. We get back into the pick up and asshole starts asking me where his cartridge is. He sticks his finger down the chamber, is going through is pockets, has his one spent case on the deer, but a cartridge is missing and he is being a real prick about it in I LOST THAT CARTRIDGE.
I was in no mood and said I did not know what happened, but I did not lose the cartridge, never worked the action, all I did was hold the gun. My brother is driving and I could tell he was getting pissed about this pissing around, so he reaches over, slams the bolt closed and opens the chamber back up, and out pops the missing round. I kept my mouth shut. My brother never said a word. Asshole brother in law never apologized or said another word. That is what you call a  real fuckhead, although Charles Askins would not have been published if he had written that.


As I'm telling stories here about asshole Tom, this one has always puzzled me and I think in driving around with TL I finally figured out what the hell happened. So Tom cons a friend from work to take him along elk hunting to Colorado with 2 other guys who are regulars. Asshole has all his food packaged up in baggies, buys a coleman stove and off he goes. Asshole did not test the stove and it would not work out in the mountains which pleased me greatly but is typical of this asshole.

So he gets back and has this troubled look and story on the hunt. Asshole shoots an elk calf. Somewhere in this, one of the guys really gets pissed off and he just up and leaves and Tom can not figure out why or what he has done.
As my brother said to me, "What the hell is he shooting a calf for? If there is a calf, there are cows, so shoot a cow". That make sense.

I could never figure this all out as Tom knew where they hunted, but he never ventured back to that area to ever hunt again .Always was trying to win a hunt from Rocky Mountain Elk Federation.

What I think happened is, there is etiquette in maybe the new guy is supposed to wait a bit and not shoot the first animal, and when you see calves, you hold off, as chances are there would be bulls in rut around the cows.
So asshole gets elk fever like he does and goes nuts, probably empties his gun. Probably is running around screaming what a great hunt he has just had and scares all the other elk off. Asshole as his elk is important, probably got pissy like with that rifle cartridge and his deer, and starts telling people they have to help him get his elk butchered and the game back. They probably do, but about this time, the guy who is furious, knows  the elk are all gone........knows the hunt is over.........Tom probably "mentions" I shot at a couple of them and chased them until I got mine, and then makes some smart ass comment to the guy as he simply has no sense to keep his mouth shut.

I think the story went something like that as he ruined this guys elk hunt, something the guy looked forward to every year and Tom spoiled it all. The guy he conned probably told him to not come back as the other guy was going to kill him if he ever saw him again. I actually would buy license for him and pay gas to have that happen as that is one son of a bitch who sits in the church pew and I figure is going to hell.

I could tell other stories, but that would get off the hunting line, and I'm already off wingshooting to rifle work on the people you never want along with you on a hunt or to have guns around you ever.

It is my dilemma though now in I don't like killing things and do not, but I still love eating game of all kinds. It is like the dilemma that they just do not make pretty shotguns much anymore. I really like the Turkish home defense pump we got, but is plastic and black. Granted is better looking than Big Mike Obama by a long shot, but there is something about my old trench pump gun on Browning design, the wood is that colour of too much motor oil lubricant, blood, hand salt, dirt, sweat and grime with gunpowder that Chic is just pretty. Chic only works some of the time due to a weak firing spring, but Chic named after Chicapee Falls MA where it was born for the first world war, is that scent of some old boy who smoked like a chimney, got that cheap ass gun, his kids shot it, he died and my old man picked it up with a pile of junk for 17 bucks That shotgun was plumb wore out
(Interesting spiders in the editor here just changed to Chinese.)


I adore that shotgun though and think of all the game it harvested.  I would that I would have had one of Charles Askins shotguns. That would be fun to take out and just watch the dogs work and the birds fly away.


Nuff Said


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