doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Touching the barrel on a Combination Gun

Gentlemen,

Am new to the shooting of a combination gun. How sensitive are they to you touching the barrel when shooting. I know that on a bolt action rifle, particularly with a free floating barrel even light finger pressure on the barrel can through a shot off by several inches.

With a combo / drilling given the support of the adjacent barrels are they less sensitive to hand touch or resting barrel on a soft support etc.

With my new over an under combination gun (Heinrich Munch) I am conscious that given my longish arms and short forend I am tending to hold it on the barrels - indeed with a shotgun I use an English style hold with my forearm quite straight gripping the barrels of either a side by side or over and under.

Yes the right answer is to get out there and test it, but at £2 per bang and difficulty in getting ammo would rather ask if somebody else knows the answer.

I've never seen a rifle that could be moved 2 inches at 100yds by touching the barrel free floating or not.

Post deleted by Mike Harrell

I don't think you have anything to worry about. Even if what you had heard about free-floating barrels were true (something I've never heard of nor seen)consider that the rifle barrel on a combination gun is held in place by two ribs connecting it to the shotgun barrel with hard solder. I'd say it would be impossible to grip the barrels hard enough to make them flex and effect accuracy.

Best

Nick

A combination gun such as you describe was designed to be used by a jaeger as a rifle rather than a game gun. The shotgun barrel was there to deal with a fox, marder, or even stray cat while the hunter sat a high seat for roe or boar. Fit, in the British sense of the word, wasn't particularly relevent.

It was (is) more important on a drive hunt where feather and fur would be encountered. For such a hunt, the drilling was the better solution. In that case, fit would be more important for use of the shotgun. But even in this case, the rifle would not have been an issue. For that boar at 70 meters, one needs to "aim" that rifle, not point it.

Handle the gun (at the range) as you would in the field.

Everyone I know and most I've seen who handle double rifles and combination guns / cape guns -- they grip the barrels forward of the forend wood.

If you're shooting from a bench, set up in a position that is as similar to your standing field position as possible. Grip the gun as you would, and if you must use a rest, use only a rest under the back of your support hand.
This way the rifle can recoil as it would naturally and will print your targets in as similar fashion as it would in the field as possible.


Have fun with it!



Cheers
Tinker

A curious thing with shooting the rifle barrel in a drilling type combination is that if you fire quite a few shots and the rifle barrel heats up and the shotgun barrels remain cool it will begin to walk its shots up the target. As the rifle barrel heats it will expand against the cool shotgun barrels and bend very slightly upwards much in the way of a bi-metallic strip in a thermostat. Lagopus.....

Heym..
Er,exactly how short is your, er..Forend?
Franc