doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Field grades - shouldn't they be 12 gauges?

Rabbit why are you so stuck-on the elites, this was to be about the most basic of the American sporting shotguns....the field grade.
...and it most basic gauge.

On one hand, I enjoy my English gun(no better gun made), and on the other hand I enjoy my American field grades and lower graded guns(none more interesting). All 12 gauge, or 12 bore, however you like - I like duck hunting don't you know - so it twelves! This leaves all the middling to upper grades, and the smaller bore sizes to you for the moment.
...but that may change!

Lowell, you crack me up! Half the time I'm not sure I know what you're talking about (except I can tell you're "talkin' smack,") but you sure do know how to stir the pot! Remind me never to walk into a biker bar with you. One comment about "field grade" guns and social status/financial means. Just because a guy could afford a pricey gun doesn't guarantee that he bought one. My dad, for instance, was a successful banker and could have justified hunting with pretty much any gun, but he carried a Remington Model 11 Sportsman his entire life. Estimated value today, $300, or about $35 per pound. Of course, I wouldn't sell it for ten times that, and I love shooting ducks with it. You'll be glad to know, however, that it was a 12-gauge. Keep up the good work. TT

So it was the cornfed clodhoppers who shot the deluxe grades?
Nothing gets the rash itchen like topics of best guns, and field grade guns. I feel sorry for the guys who have climbed-up the ladder to the mid-grades. Out of the cellar, but not to the gunrooms. Where's the excitement with them?

HEY!!!! I resemble that.

I think the mid grades are where it's at. Good guts, no frills. Keep your Purdeys and H&H, they're nice but far from essential. Thank the babyboomers and Ralph Lauren for the mindless pursuit of best. Once an exclusive place, no longer that. What's this thread about anyway? Failed as a joey trap.

Quite the contrary, Lowell. However much Mr. Ansley may have despised the necessity of the low-end bread and butter product, the Sterlingworth was still not quite the Volksgun. $30 in 1911 dollars would have had the buying power of about $600 in 1993. Given the "plowing it back in and praying for a good result" nature of family farming and the relatively large and hungry "all in the family" work force that made labour-intensive agriculture barely possible and tolerable, my intuition as well as my experience tells me that the average small farmer of 1911 probably wouldn't have taken naturally to the idea that he had $30 in "disposable" (read money to burn) income and would have very likely stepped off his back porch into the gamey landscape with a no-name single-barrel meat gun, leaving the "lowly" S/W or Parker Trojan to the "sports". And, as you say, in 12 gauge.

jack

But don't you know that calls for a "Marsh Gun" not a "Field Gun". 12ga may be "King" of the duck marsh, but the 16 is still "Queen" of the Uplands (Field). Of course if one is talking strictly "Grade" then neither use, ga, weight or whatever matters, simply adornment.

Enough already! Are we going to fight the Revolutionary War again? The Brits lost, remember. I'm happy with my stable of 80 year-old Nitro Specials. A 16 and 20 ga. P.S. Lowell, my beloved wife is a Brit. Field Grade at that, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Chops

So where are those signle shots today Rabbit, by your account there must be many. I've been to farm auctions, rural VFW gunshows - can't recall seeing any in the rustic heartland.
The St. Louis Hardware store's single shots went west to lighten the load. The good ol'boys round here(you know, the ones that put meat on your table) made enough for the likes of the Sterlingworth.
Better look to the wild west for these no-name single shots.