Hunting Short & Long Barreled Smoothbores

[roundball]

Pros & Cons of keeping shorter barreled smoothbores around:

I've had the good luck of turning over a few center fire rifles / shotguns to end up with a good pair of .54cal & .62cal smoothbore Virginias and that pair alone will cover most of my hunting no problem at all.
And when I want to use a smoothbore for squirrels, deer, turkeys, crows, etc, they're the ones I reach for...no longer the shorter 32" barreled GM .54cal/.62cal drop-in smoothbores on a couple T/C Hawkens.

But I’m reluctant to let go of either one of the T/C-GM Flintlocks for fear as soon as I do, with a lot of time soon on my hands in retirement I’ll decide I want to try some doves or crows more often, or shoot some occasional rounds of skeet, and would only have long barreled 42”x.28ga and 38”x.20ga smoothbores to do that.

So the big question is this:
Does anyone actually have a lot of hands on experience wing shooting skeet / doves / crows (successfully...LOL) with long barreled smoothbores?

 

[Stumpkiller]

For 15 years I hunted with a .66 cal 42" Bess. My success rate on wingshooting was zero.

I also have a 12 ga T/C New Englander with a 28" barrel. I connect often enough on grouse and bunnies that it is fun and occasionally productive.

Now, part of that is simply weight. The Bess is no fowler and is a club that shoots. The New Englander I built from a kit and had the opportunity to work the stock to fit me . . . some. I have a 16 bore fowler on order that I hope will be an upland gun. Should be about three pounds less than the Bess with the same length & caliber.

 

[roundball]

Appreciate the perspective...goes hand-in-hand with where my head is on this...been thinking on it for the past few days and the lack of any posts here to the contrary, I just can't get rid of both of them.

And with the 32" x .62cal GM smoothbore being jug-choked to light-modified and able to handle larger loads than the smaller .54cal, it'll be the one I'll hang on to. Plus, 'Swampy' had already made a fringed, suede lace-on butt cuff for my T/C Hawkens, so I'll have a flat butt covering the cresent plate for quick "shotgun" mounting if I use it for doves / crows.

 

[BrownBear]

My frame of reference is moving targets with shot, specifically snowshoe hare and ptarmigan with a GM 62 smooth barrel on a Renegade and a short Bess, those two species along with ducks and geese with a Pieta 12 ga SxS, and a few shots at ptarmigan with a friend's 62 trade gun- a "sorta" fowler.

I dislike the GM for wing shooting, though it's not bad for hares on the run. It's just too slow to swing for me on fast movers. While I can sometimes go "straight" for 10-12 shots at ptarmigan with the 12 and only 1 oz of shot, I can't run three in a row with the 62 and more shot, or less for that matter. Just not my tea dispenser. The Bess falls somewhere between. The stock is a little too short for me and I tend to overshoot with it. The friend's trade gun fit me fine and shot to point of aim, but I had a bad tendency to overswing with it. I'd really like to get a true fowler, but I'm going to wait till I get the chance to shoot a few before slapping cash. My impulse is that something in the 32" range but a lot lighter than the GM might be just right, but I won't know till I see a few ptarmigan flushing in front of me.

 

[shortbow]

Thanks a lot for bringing up this topic. I've shot double shotguns a lot for lots of years, but am really having trouble getting my head around my new j.Brown fowler as a bird gun. In every way that I know about (which isn't a lot because this is my first flinter of any kind) this gun handles like a rifle. I'm still wringing it and myself out, but it is so different from anything I've ever shot at birds or clays with that I've already had some thoughts of whacking the barrel back.

Years ago I had an Antonio Zoli percussion smoothy which once I had dropped the comb on was murder on birds. In comparison, this new fowler seems like a heavy target rifle or a post hole digger with a stock on it.

Anyhow, I hope this thread gets lots of responses because I obviously have a lot to learn.

 

[Rifleman1776]

The Bess is no fowler and is a club that shoots.

Won't argue that. But one of my best huntin gloats came when a friend took me quail hunting. I had never hunted 'birds' as they are called around here. He had a very nice modern shotgun and was an experienced bird hunter. I carried my Brown Bess with 7 1/2 shot. At days end I was the only one with quail in my bag. Did I say "gloat"? :grin:

 

[Stumpkiller]

I did OK with bunnies (especially them that held under bushes) but grouse in the local cover just out thinked and out jinked me. By the time I had the hammer back and was pulling the trigger they had a tree between us. I'm looking forward to my 16 ga English fowler.

I have a little Ithaca/SKB 200E 20ga SxS and that's an ideal grouse gun . . . but blackpowder is just more darned fun.

 

[BrownBear]

By the time I had the hammer back and was pulling the trigger they had a tree between us.

That makes me wonder about something, or perhaps suggest something. Our ptarmigan are certainly as fast or faster than the grouse I've shot, but of course we don't have the trees to interfere, at least up in the tundra. They remind me a lot of chukkars in fact, and are just as quick to get out of range even in the wide open.

Here's my "wonder." Are you waiting till you have the gun mounted before thumbing back the hammer? I've always thumbed it back as I raised the gun, leaving it ready to fire the moment it hits my shoulder if need be. I can usually get off an accurate shot plenty quick doing that.

 

[George]

I've had a fair run at small game with my 46" flintlock fowler, and the results are about what you would expect. If I'm "jump shooting" anything, mostly rabbits, occasionally a quail, I have very limited success. If it races off into the cover in a matter of 2-3 seconds, I'm not much of a threat. There are exceptions, I did outdraw a panicked squirrel I surprised on the ground at 20 yards on my off side and nailed him before he could move 10 feet to cover. The only moving game I've done reasonably well with is doves in a passing situation. Overhead and in view for a bit with time to take a relaxed shot, I do much better. Not as well as with my 32" SxS, but well enough that I usually take the long gun for doves.

Spence

 

[roundball]

That's also good input...I had thought / hoped that the 38" swamped .62cal Virginia would not be a handicap for open field shots at doves / crows.

And the only 'jump-shooting' type game there might possibly be around where I hunt would be the rare quail which would also normally be in an open field, and reality is I can't remember the last time I saw one.

So far, the discussion tends to make the case that I probably don't need to keep any 32" barreled smoothbores given I have the 38" Virginia, no more types of wing-shooting game that I have available...

 

[Stumpkiller]

Are you waiting till you have the gun mounted before thumbing back the hammer? I've always thumbed it back as I raised the gun, leaving it ready to fire the moment it hits my shoulder if need be. I can usually get off an accurate shot plenty quick doing that.

Nope. Mount as the hammer is drawn back and shoot as soon as the barrel moves ahead of the grouse from an overtaking swing. I hunt with a top-safety SxS and it's a similar movement though it takes a hair longer. It's the swing and overswing and swing back that got me; or just not catching up to the grouse at all before it was invisible. :haha: We call it "grouse scaring" instead of hunting.

 

[BrownBear]

It's the swing and overswing and swing back that got me; or just not catching up to the grouse at all before it was invisible. :haha: We call it "grouse scaring" instead of hunting.

That sounds all to familiar to me, but we call it pterrorizing ptarmigan. :grin:

All the overswhing and back and forth is what kills my performance, too. The right gun for you is a wonder, and the others belong in someone else's rack. I can relate to your top safety modern gun too. For me it's a little Savage 410 SxS. Our ptarmigan limit is 20/person, and my record is 37 straight over two days. It sure has me looking for one of the CVA 410 SxS, I'll tell you.

 

[roundball]

That's also good input...I had thought / hoped that the 38" swamped .62cal Virginia would not be a handicap for open field shots at doves / crows.

And the only 'jump-shooting' type game there might possibly be around where I hunt would be the rare quail which would also normally be in an open field, and reality is I can't remember the last time I saw one.

So far, the discussion tends to make the case that I probably don't need to keep any 32" barreled smoothbores given I have the 38" Virginia, no more types of wing-shooting game that I have available...

Just realized I forgot about possibly wanting to shoot a few skeet targets now and then...will hang on to the 32" x .62cal after all...can always move it out in the future if I find I don't use it.

 

[tg]

I have found that I do about as well as I used to with a shorter barreled mdl 1200 or 1897 with close shots,a bad shoulder causes me more problems than the barrel length, I had a 35" flinter I used for a while and did as well witrh it as the 42 incher, I am sure ythere is some advantge with the shorter batrrls but not enough for me to change to one, many squirrels I take are on the run of on te fly in the cover and brushy limbs it is about like wing shooting, I do carry the longer gun a bit differently but that is true for me with any flintlock.the last time I shot clays I did as about well as some of the times out years ago with a cartridge gun, I do not shoot shot as well overall as I did 30 years ago but with the shoulder thing it is really hard to put any difference onto the barrel length as I cannot really compare apples and apples, I know that the fusi with the long barrel I now shoot fits and comes up better than any cartridge gun I ever owned, that may be a big plus, but then some time ago I was matter of factly told that one could not kill a forest Grouse with a barrel over 30" long so I guess I really do not know much about this topic. When really hungry I have always prefered my Grouse/Mt Quail sitting atop a stump, I found a few coveys of Quail last week while cutting firewood for Dad and am planning on looking them up next month so I may have more to share then.

 

[roundball]

That's also good input...I had thought / hoped that the 38" swamped .62cal Virginia would not be a handicap for open field shots at doves / crows.

And the only 'jump-shooting' type game there might possibly be around where I hunt would be the rare quail which would also normally be in an open field, and reality is I can't remember the last time I saw one.

So far, the discussion tends to make the case that I probably don't need to keep any 32" barreled smoothbores given I have the 38" Virginia, no more types of wing-shooting game that I have available...

Just realized I forgot about possibly wanting to shoot a few skeet targets now and then...will hang on to the 32" x .62cal after all...can always move it out in the future if I find I don't use it.

It's beginning to occur to me that I may be letting go of the wrong short barreled smoothbore.

If the only thing I might want to keep a 32" barreled smoothbore around for are some occasional skeet targets, I should probably keep the .28ga and let go of the Jug Choked .20ga...just the opposite of what I'd first thought.

:hmm: