doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Turkish shotgun

Miller,
I going to go out on a limb and guess Richland was gunning, no pun intended, for the guy who had a mortgage, a wife who didn�t work, 2.5 kids, a single car garage with one car in it, and just enough room in the budget for a new gun, built to do nothing superbly, but, a few different things well. Provided the gun came in at less that $150 Richard Nixon era dollars, something our hero had to think twice about spending.
It would have been fine in a duck blind, ditto tramping around in a stubble field behind a lab, looking for pheasants, an OK squirrel gun, as you noted, and a grouse gun, if the shooter did his part. A few of them might have had a slug loaded into them also, and a deer taken.
I knew guys with one gun as a kid. A good rule of thumb I noticed was the more kids a family in my neighborhood had, the fewer guns, tools, and hobbies were practiced in that house.
We, as in you and I, were not the intended market, from what I can see from this late juncture.

Best,
Ted

I can offer one other good reason, Miller. You were invited to hunt wild quail on a neighboring plantation with the owner, who specifies that no gauge larger than a 20 be used, and only in guns that hold two shells maximum. Doesn't matter that he doesn't consider a 12 with 7/8 oz. loads just as sporting..............it's his place, his birds, his dogs.............................



and you're his invitee..............................



It's either honor his stipulations, or tell him "No, thank you".



SRH

Stan;
In that situation, I would carry a 20 & probably l,oad it with 7/8 oz of #8's. If I were to carry a 28 I would only load it with 3/4 oz of 8's. I have never shot less than an oz from the 12 but would not hesitate to drop to 7/8 oz if it were a requirement.

Ted;
Your description fit me like a glove back in 1968. I was just finished with my apprenticeship, had a Wife, 3 children, one car & had turned that one car garage into another room. This one did shoot one deer, a doe. A state-managed area near me (where I worked at the time was on the property) had a Ladies only either sex hunt & my Wife carried it & killed a doe. This was also the area where I would occasionally go for the Fox Squirrels, though anywhere it was legal I normally shot a .22 LR with standard velocity loads. I did not like a sonic crack in a squirrel rifle so stayed away from the HiVel loads. Tried some shorts once but the rifle I was using, which was a tack driver with LR's threw a pattern rather than a group with shorts.

A year or so prior I killed my first deer, a 6-pointer that field dressed 174 lbs up in the mountains outside of Crossville TN. Used a re-worked Spanish
1916 in 7x57. It had already been modified when I got it so no chance of it ever being a collector so I dressed it up a bit better than it was. It had a bit of excess headspace so I reformed brass to fit out of 06 brass & loaded 140 Sierra bullets. The only deer we had back then around home was on that managed area. Now we have more deer than rabbits.

Miller,
Sorry, never pictured you as a one gun guy. But, if that was what the Richland Company was after, it sounds like they got their man.

Mine was given to me by the previous owner. I�ll bet he had 50 new in the box shotguns when he died, minus the Richland he gave me on a cold Thanksgiving.

Why I got this one is something I will never know for sure. He was a good friend. I try to make it out hunting at some point every Thanksgiving holiday, and I make a special effort to bring this gun for that trip. If I can�t make it out, the gun gets taken out of the safe, shouldered a few times, wiped down and returned.

Someday, I intend to pass the gun along the same way it came to me.

Best,
Ted

Ted;
Even then I was not a "1 Gun" man, but I didn't have very many back then.
By a lot of folks standards II still don't have a lot but have a lot more than I did in the 60's. I just started a new thread Picture Test. Shows the right & left side plates of my FE Lefever. This was the next gun I bought after the Richland, first one I had to do paperwork on. At that point, I was still a bit uneasy about shooting Damascus. I had bought this one for $125.00 & then spent $150.00 to send it to Italy & have a set of Boehler Steel barrels fitted, so $275.00 in it total, a big expense for me at that point in my life. By the time I decided to send it & it hen got delayed due to changes in customs laws it was in late 1970 before I got it back. For about the next 45 years it was my #1 go to gun for just about everything. Has 26" barrels with .012/.024 chokes. I have used some others along the way, but none as much as this one.

Miller,
I have killed perhaps two or three 3/4 ton pickup trucks full of squirrels, 99% of them with .22 shorts. I used a Remington 552, a gun that will fire all the different lengths of .22 ammunition and interchangeably. I�d be willing to bet that at the bench, the standard velocity long rifle stuff would be more accurate, but, shorts are accurate enough. Put a short through a bushy tail on a high branch, and 99 times out of 100, it knocks his little ass out of the tree. They are quieter, also.
My Remington 581 also handles .22 shorts just fine.
I retired from squirrel hunting when Dad started goose hunting, and he began leaving my Mom�s Irish Setter, a show dog that would hunt, at home.
We had a lot of fun.

Best,
Ted

Ted;
For a number of years, I shot squirrel with a lowly Mossberg 42-MC bolt action rifle with a 7-shot detachable magazine (most incorrectly call a clip). From a good rest at about what I considered my normal squirrel shooting range I could put those .22 LR's about touching each other. Best it would do with shorts was 4-6 inches, which is simply not accurate enough to kill squirrels. I could never figure out why & I know that lots of rifles chambered for the LR will also shoot shorts with good accuracy, but this one wouldn't. The magazine had a screw ending with a rod you threaded in from the bottom as a spacer to adapt it for the shorter cartridge. I had foolishly taken it on trade for something. The value was so low the only way I could realize a return was to Shoot It. As long as I stuck to the LR's if a missed a squirrel it was purely My Fault. A co-worker of mine at the time was an instructor for a youth shooting club & he bought Canuck 22's in standard velocity to use at an indoor range. He would let me have them at his cost, as I recall they were about $6.00 a carton at that time. None of our local stores even stocked any standard velocity cartridges back then, many still don't.

Miller,
You inspired me to get one of the .22s out for a walk. However, when I pulled the Remington 581 out of it�s case, I discovered it�s scope had been removed, for reasons I can�t remember. It has been a while, sadly. A few gun shows ago, on a lark, I bought a Weaver 1� 4X Marksman, in excellent condition, for $10.
Bolted it down today, and will sight it in tomorrow. The 581 had it�s barrel shortened an inch, and a target crown cut into it, and needs a scope to be used.
If the opportunity ever presents itself to you, I can recommend the Remington 580 guns as accurate little shooters, without reservation.
They will handle any .22 , short, long, or long rifle.

Best,
Ted

Ted;
As long as I can get the standard or sub-sonic LR I have no desire at all for the shorts. The reason I tried them in the Mossberg was to get away from the sonic crack. Back in the depression days shorts were cheaper than LR's so many shot them for the economy. Today when you can even find a short they are more expensive than the LR's. For a squirrel rifle, I always preferred the "Clip" over a tubular magazine & also prefer the 40-grain bullet over the 29 grain. Now that I am not hunting much anymore at all I have inherited a Marlin 39A which will serve all my purposes for a .22. This one belonged to my late Brother-in-Law & I also got a matching 336 in .35 Rem along with the 39A.

Although it didn't belong to me a shot a single shot bolt action Remington quite a bit. It was very accurate for a low priced gun as were nearly all Remington .22's I ever had any dealings with. As I recall this one was maybe a 512.

The last few times I squirrel hunted with a .22, it was with a close friend who had a great little fice squirrel dog, who would tree them and raise a furor until we arrived. He used a Ruger 77/22 and I used a Smith and Wesson K22 w/ 6" barrel. It's got wonderful square notch rear and square blade front sights, and is highly accurate at treetop distances. After that I became fond of using a .36 cal. Appalachian style longrifle with 25 grs. FFFG, head shots only. I need to start back. I'm overrun with the tree rats around here.

SRH