Nice video, Mike. Beautiful countryside.

Some excerpts from "A Shooting Man's Creed" by Sir Joseph Nickerson, published in 1989.

p. 31 "For the last few seasons I have used nothing but trios of Purdey 28 bores, beautiful 5 1/2-pound over-and-under guns which suit me very well".

p. 32 "If you have been using a 12 bore all your life, switching to a lighter gun is quite an exercise but worth the effort in the satisfaction it provides. The advantages of a lighter gun when one is older are quite pronounced, permitting a faster swing. I am now down to 28 bore guns for all types of shooting and am killing birds as difficult and as far away as I ever did with a 12 bore, as many friends can testify. Over the last four seasons, at grouse, wild Spanish partridges and English pheasants, the average number of cartridges expended per bird has worked out at 1.8, using a pair of guns and taking on all shootable birds, not just the easy ones."

p. 93 "Most of the books about Big Shots and Great Shoots refer, in nostalgic wonderment, to the bags achieved by Lord Ripon, who is said to have shot 97,503 grouse in his long lifetime. That was at a time when grouse moors were at their best with plenty of keepers and no other expense spared, yet my records show that in the last fifteen years I have shot more grouse that Lord Ripon did in his last fifteen - and he continued until his death which occurred on a grouse moor. My best-ever year was as recent as 1988 when I shot 3390, while I had accounted for over 3000 in the previous season, as I also had in 1982. Lord Ripon killed 3435 grouse to his own guns in his best season, using 12 bores, while I used 28 bores."


May God bless America and those who defend her.