doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Forearm Shapes and Hand Position

I've been studying forearm shapes and noticed many vintage British rifles have these minimal and strongly tapered forearms. Here's a good example from a Jeffery ad from 1908.
https://ibb.co/k27rXM6Z

Another good example would be Jim Corbett's famous Rigby rifle:
https://ibb.co/whxmsCjN

Here is another picture of Corbett’s rifle, and notice the forearm is so small and narrow that a person's hands wrap around it easily:
https://ibb.co/Zp7pZqyz

Heym is currently making a similar style rifle, and apparently they worked with Ralph Martini to design the stock:
https://ibb.co/zhhtDP66
https://www.gunsinternational.com/g...1-4--excellent-plus.cfm?gun_id=101020050

I've never handled a rifle shaped like this, much less shot one. So my question is when shooting a rifle like this, especially when shooting one with iron sights as they were originally designed, do you wrap your fingers around the forearm and maybe partially around the barrel? In other words, in a manner similar to how you would hold a side-by-side shotgun with a splinter forend? I've always shot rifles with my fingers only on the wooden forend. And I know that some say varying forend pressure can effect accuracy. So I would think wrapping your fingers around, or partially around the barrel could effect accuracy. My guess is, at the distances these rifles were originally designed to work, with open iron sights, any accuracy differences would be negligible.

I would love to hear from others who have shot rifles like this or have thoughts on how they were designed to be used. Thanks!

For better or worse this is how I hold my rifles.
https://www.amazon.com/Hemingways-Guns-Sporting-Ernest-Hemingway/dp/1586671596

I wrap the fore arm firmly in my hand and my fingers usually touch the barrel a bit. I have very large hands. It seems to work for me on the vintage British guns. This is 5 shots at 200 yards, just over a 3" group with a 2&1/2 power scope, it has a small rapidly tapering fore end.

In those photos it appears that the bottom line of the forearm is in line with or even just slightly above the sling attachment eye. Ernest seems to have run the back of his hand along the sling until it got to the attachment point and was pulling back on the front of the forearm. Possibly the presence of a sling has something to do with the holding point.