doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Heavy 20 gauge guns before WWI.

I believe there were a number of upscale duck clubs in California that went on a long barreled and tight choked 20 ga. kick during that period. Not sure if they were compulsory or just the flavor of the month.
Terry

I used to hunt (as a guest) at a club just down the road a bit from where I think the old Wigeon Club had been located. The clubhouse had log books going back to the twenties and a review of those logs showed that a lot of hunters were using small bores, including 28's and .410's. The thing that most surprised me was the sheer number of ducks logged by the 28 ga crowd in those days.

Edwin L. Hedderly, the editor of Western Field magazine, headquartered in Los Angles, experimented with, and wrote extensively about his long barrel Parker Bros. smallbores. His series on smallbores began in the September 1910 issue and ran for over a year. I don't know what gun he was using at first, but he ordered a 32-inch barrel, DHE-Grade, 20-gauge, on February 10, 1911. On April 4th, he ordered a similar 28-gauge. On April 26th, 1912, he ordered a 32-inch barrel A1-Special 20-gauge and on May 14th, 1912, a 32-inch, 16-gauge, A1-Special. These guns were all paid for by Parker Bros. advertsing in the magazine. Hedderly's 16-gauge A1-Special was pictured on the cover of the September 1966 Guns & Ammo magazine and also on page 26 of Larry Baer's first book on Parkers.

Even though Hedderly had his guns made with short chambers, there were quite a few 3" twenties and a few 3" sixteens made for the California market. Even though the Parker Brothers Smallbore Shotguns pamphlet mentions that the 7/8 ounce 20 gauge load was unacceptable for use in Parkers and not available in commercial ammunition, there were 20 gauge Parkers ordered in the same era to be used with a full ounce of shot.

A 1913 Lefever catalog has a page devoted to proper loads for the various gauges. For the 20ga loads of both 3/4oz & 7/8oz are given. No mention is made of chamber length. Also I have a post 1907 LAC 16ga with 3" chambers. Although I can in no manner prove it it would be more logical to have been ordered that way than to have been later re-chambered as the 3" never became a "Standard" in 16.

Were 3" 16 ga. shells ever made as a general product for the public? Or were they simply offered in small runs to special customers and/or as reloading components?

For me, they remain in the "heard of it, but never SAW it" category.

Mike;
My knowledge of the 16ga in a 3" chambering is rather limited. They were listed in old UMC catalogs. I would suppose the only "Special" requirement would have been to have enough Cash for some minimum order. There well could have been some regions where they gained enough popularity that a dealer in the area could afford to stock them, just don't really know. I have never seen one of the original 3" 16ga shells, I only have the gun with that length chamber. It does have a normal length forcing cone for the era in which the gun was built. It is incidently an H grade with twist bbls. I can thus think of no good reason for it to have been re-chambered at a later date.

Sometime in the 1970's I was at a local gun store & a gentleman brought in a Fired Rem SP hull which was a 16ga 3" with markings on it of 3DE 1�oz 7� shot. He had picked it up from the ground in a wooded area where he was as I recall deer hunting. I have no idea what this shell had been fired at, perhaps a grouse but a rather heavy load for that purpose. I presume there was some experimenting with a 3" 16ga loading at that time, but it seems to have never made it to the market place.

I have a 1913 made 20 gauge L C Smith featherweight ejector with 32 inch full choke barrels,2 1/2 inch chambers and it weighs about 6 1/4 lbs.It came from Ca. and handles great with those long tubes and i shoot 3/4 ounce Poly Wads in it and it will bring down doves at 45 to 50 yards with no trouble. Bobby

Dr. Drew Hause posted some articles about the Parker Bros. "Knight of the Trigger", Arthur DuBray, making a swing through the southeast and doing quite a bit of hunting with a 2 7/8 inch 16-gauge. The long shells in all gauges were a special order item up until the introduction of Western Cartridge Co.'s 12-gauge 3-inch Super-X load in their Record shell, with 1 3/8 ounces of shot, in 1922.

R.W. Harris searched the A.H. Fox 16-gauge graded gun records and only came up with a handful (less than ten) Fox 16-gauge guns ordered chambered for 3-inch shells. I've found one 16-gauge Fox ordered chambered for 2 7/8 inch shells. I've searched the first 1200 Fox 20-gauge production cards and come up with 32 guns ordered for 3-inch shells and six for 2 7/8 inch shells. None of these early Fox 20-gauge guns ordered for 3-inch shells were particularly heavy, and ranged from a 28-inch CE-grade at 5 pounds 11 ounces to a 32-inch DE-Grade 7 pounds 1 ounce.

In my pre WW-I UMC catalogues the heaviest "standard" 20-gauge loads in the 2 1/2 inch shell were 2 1/4 drams of bulk smokeless powder and 7/8 ounce of shot, or dense smokeless powder like Ballistite of 18 grains and 7/8 ounces of shot. You could get a load of 2 1/2 drams of bulk smokelss powder and 7/8 ounces of shot or 20-grains of Ballistite and 7/8 ounces of shot in a 2 3/4 inch or longer case. Both of these boxes of long 20-gauge shells carry a load that could have been had in a 2 3/4 inch case --





As the 1927 Peters Cartridge Co. catalogue page, that I posted earleier, for their High Velocity shells shows, you could get the 16-gauge High velocity load of 3 drams equiv. and 1 1/8 ounces of shot in the standard 2 9/16 inch shell for $53.50 per thousand. You could get the same load in 2 3/4, 2 7/8, or 3-inch shells with more wadding for $63.50 per thousand.

Edwin L. Hedderly.
O.K., thank you.

Russian period gun books seem to imply that in the late XIX century Eley shells and loaded cartridges could be ordered in 65, 70, and 76 mm lengths in all gauges.