doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Don Zutz

Pretty decent credentials as a competitive shooter as well as a hunter gave him some credibility a lot of other gun writers lack.

Zutz was a recirculater of long held truisms whether they were actually true or not and a dedicated stater of the obvious.

Here is a condensed version of every gun test I ever read of his:

The ..... feels great in the hands and comes readily to the shoulder. The patterns from the .... are evenly distributed and within the specs for the marked chokes. I liked the .... a lot. You will too.

have another day

Dr.WtS

Wonko, you probably need to reread (or perhaps read for the first time) Zutz' "The Double Shotgun". A lot of lovers of classic sxs are probably put off by the fact that he was not all that high on the British, nor on most of the classic American sxs except the Model 21. But he fooled around with a lot of guns, including those in the economy category. Wrote about a number of those in a collection of his columns called "Grand Old Shotguns".

I had some difficulty relating to him as a bird hunter because he wasn't into dogs. No question that he didn't have McIntosh's talent as a wordsmith, but his stuff was down to earth and practical.

It was back in the 70's, when I was still in the service. Young, poor and dumb unlike now I'm older,.... My buddy and I were dropped off by his uncle and camped out for a week. I wanted a large Moose head and he wanted a Moose and bear. I only had a license for a Moose, no money. We split up the second day and I stumbled into my bear. It charged and I was lucky to get a fatal shot off before he rearranged my private parts. One shot, just inside the left eye socket stopped him, nothing else would have. That .270 was never intended for bear use, even Jack O'Conner knew that but he did preach it was fine for everything else.

I still smoked back then it took a good ten minutes to get a cigarette going. I never got my Moose. My buddy did, he got his and took my bear as his own. In fact if you got a few drinks in him he would recount the charge. I think he told so many people, for so long, that that's the way it is for him. He had the skin and skull along with a few pictures he took on the trip. I haven't seen him for 25-30 years. Maybe I can see if he still has a picture. I've still got a few friends from those days and will try to see where he is. I hate looking up "old" friends these days because I find too many are dead.

By the way, crank scopes down to lowest setting, make noise to warn bears your there, bring a bigger gun and pack extra underwear if you are Moose hunting and a bear pops up. That's my advise.

I don't care if you have pics of that bear Jon, but you better still have that rifle!!

Treblig1958, sorry to say that I sold all my Winchester Model 70's about 25-30 years ago and the money they sold for was used to buy a decent size farm. I had a lot of them and only wish I had a couple of them back, but not that one. Still have the farm and my son killed his first wild quail there yesterday. I'll take that memory any day over what a nightmare of what could have happened. I still have 17 of the .270 rounds I brought back from Alaska. After he went down I put a couple extra rounds in him to make sure he was not going to get up and kick my ass. Kept the rounds to remind myself of that day and never be that stupid again. It was my fault entirely and not the bears but I had the gun and he did not.

KyJ: Black bear or Grizzly bear?

Pay attention, Buzz.

Oops, my bad. Scary re Brown bear! Yikes.

Would you pleeze give us the reference for alleged O'Connor endorsement of 270 as a brown bear rifle and-or for any thing in North America? Book or magazine article reference? O'Connor never wrote that 270 was an ideal brown bear rifle. as I remember he said it was on the light side but with right bullets it would work by cool shot and under ideal conditions. In some of his books he mentioned Alaskan game warden Hosea Sarber who took many browns with a 270 but that was with heavy bullets and under controlled conditions. OConnor also wrote about hunting browns himself with 375HH and with a 300 Weatherby as I remember. I think you owe O'Connor an apology. Your comment sounds like just another one from a peanut gallery guy who knows more than some of the respected hunters and editors of the past.