What follows is a lightly edited version of an article authored by Chorizo and Kyrie for their Spanish Shotgun Forum on Yahoo Groups (now closed).
Spanish artisanal shotguns were usually built with some specific use, or range of use, in mind. This range of desired uses creates a range of shotgun archetypes, each archetype with some specific range of characteristics.
This range of archetypes creates a continuum of shotgun “types”. This continuum of type may be expressed thusly:
Light Game gun (carried much, shot little).
Medium Game Gun (carried little, shot much).
Heavy Competition Gun (heavily used, think professional "Live Pigeon Gun").
These types of guns may not translate to a specific model. Rather each type translates to a range of specific characteristics that optimizes a shotgun of that type for some specific use or array of common usages. Let’s look at the points on this continuum.
Medium Game Gun:
A 12 gauge medium game gun generally weighs between seven and seven and a quarter pounds. It typically has a straight stock and a splinter fore end but may be found with any type of fore end and stock. Medium game guns were made for general all-around shooting and usually were the “one gun owned” by hunters. "Fur and feather" guns (guns intended for both bird hunting and hunting furred game and choked cylinder & full) are not rare. These guns are built to handle the occasional heavy load that folks used while hunting and not surprisingly were used to hunt everything available….wild pigeons, hare, rabbit, perdiz (chukar), cordinez (European quail) and the occasional wild boar or Red Stag with slugs. They will usually have the Purdey third bite or a Greener cross bolt, a stock that is adequate in thickness to tolerate heavy shooting, have a hefty receiver and can be found with a reinforced receiver (bascula reforzada). Because of the heavier receiver, the barrels can be thicker and usually run in the 1450 gram range.
Commonly encountered chokes are M/F and IC/IM, but you will see more open chokes on the guns with shorter barrels. Barrel wall thickness at the muzzle is usually adequate for the installation of standard choke tubes (thin wall chokes not required). Shotguns with two barrel sets are not rare on the top end models.
While all the above are characteristics found in medium game guns, not all medium game guns have all the above characteristics and as Spanish makers would make anything the buyer wanted, a wide variety of features can be found on guns. These guns can be deceptively nimble and light feeling as it is easier to balance the gun while making it if the maker was not as weight restricted. These are also the guns that you see with the widest variety of quality. As they were built to be a utility gun, they were made to all the price points for the widest range of buyers. At the lower end, you can find guns with the simplest lock designs, simple “caveman” style engravings and minimal checkering. Fit and finish detail was not as important, yet within the same maker line, at the top end you will find some of the best guns ever produce by the Spanish makers. At the height of the Spanish gun trade (late 50’s early 60’s) you will find engraving unequaled by today’s engravers and a workmanship that is noticeably superior to most anything made today. Many folks confuse the features of a light game gun as a hallmark of a finely made gun and in the opinion of the authors (Chorizo and Kyrie) that is a huge mistake. It is the quality of the workmanship, usually not the presence or absence of a feature that sets the gun apart.
If it were possible to inspect every artisanal Spanish shotgun ever made I suspect over 90% would be classed as medium game guns.
Light Game Gun:
The Spanish light game gun has its origins in the Spain/England gun trade of the 1960's, and an account of this may be found on the AyA web site. In essence, the 12 gauge light game gun is a medium game gun that has been reformatted to weigh around six and a half pounds or less. To achieve this reduction in weight the action has lost the action reinforcement (bascula reforzada) found on many medium game guns, the third bite has mostly been eliminated, and the action itself may be found to have been made smaller across the forks of the water table. More weight reduction was accomplished by thinning down the barrel walls to some minimum thickness that corresponds to the more narrow action. As a result, barrels of light game guns generally weigh in the 1200 to 1350 gram range.
Side clips are mostly absent, and are retained only on those guns where the smaller action may require side clips to stabilize the barrels during firing.
Stocks are generally reduced in size and weight, becoming thinner in the wrist and daintier than the stocks found on medium game guns. To be able to balance the gun around the hinge pin, the stocks can be found to be hollowed out to compensate for the lighter barrels. The vast majority of light game guns have been produced 1990 and thereafter under the "new business model" after the DIARM collapse. The AyA #2 is an example of that type of gun, but you can find a few made prior to that era.
Two of these pre-DIARM light game guns (made by Ascensio Zabala) was acquired by Chorizo. The barrels of these guns weigh 1220 and 1240 grams, the guns weigh in a 6lbs 2 and 6lbs 4 ozs and have triple bites. Kyrie also has one of these Ascensio Zabala guns, and the action measured across the water table is 3/16th of an inch narrower than the actions typically found on medium game guns.
Light game guns were made purely for bird hunting ("Feather Only" rather than the "Fur and Feather" medium game gun), and do not tolerate well the medium to heavy loads. Light game guns are best used with lighter loads (one ounce of shot at 1200 fps or less MV). Most of our (now defunct Yahoo) forum members are aware of the individual who cracked the stock on his AyA #2 by firing heavy loads, and the fellow who ringed two sets of barrels at the choke by trying to push a heavy shot charge at high velocity through the thin walled chokes of a light game gun.
Heavy Competition Gun:
If the light game gun is a medium gun made lighter so it is easier to carry while hunting birds while hiking rough terrain, the pigeon gun is the exact reverse. The pigeon gun has a heavily reinforced receiver and weighs in at 7.5 pounds or heavier. It has the third bite, side clips, and barrels typically choked full/extra full. It is built for heavy, repetitive, shooting during matches where the finishers walked away with very respectable money prizes. Many pigeon guns lack safeties and have Prince of Wales butt stocks as such stocks lend themselves to a meatier wrist. It's also not rare to find pigeon guns with straight butt stocks and full beavertail fore ends. The AyA model 56 is usually built as a pigeon gun.
It's necessary to have at least a basic understanding of live pigeon shoot to understand why a pigeon gun is configured the way it is. Live pigeon shooting is the sport from which the current sport of trap is derived. In live pigeon shooting each shooter takes a position on the firing line. In front of him, about 20 yards out, are a number of small, collapsible boxes. Each of these boxes (called "traps") contains a pigeon. A cord runs from each box back to a central control point behind the shooter. A shoot official called the "trapper" has the duty to pull one of these cords when the shooter shouts "Pull!" Neither the shooter nor the trapper knows which cord under the control of the trapper controls which box. When a cord is pulled a trap collapses and the pigeon flees. The shooter must drop the pigeon inside a measured area in front of him to get credit for the bird. The shooter will fire both barrels, one after the other, in his attempt to down the bird. Birds are typically beyond thirty yards before the shooter gets off his first barrel. If the bird escapes that measured area, living or dead, the bird is "lost". Pigeon shooting is usually an elimination sport, from which shooters who lose some set number of birds are eliminated from the competition. The top winner at a live pigeon shoot may have fired several hundred shells at the end of a big match.
This is the environment in which the heavy competition gun must not just work but excel. The gun is never carried any significant distance so heavy guns are not a disadvantage. All birds are shot twice, so double triggers are not an advantage. Full and extra full chokes are an advantage. Shooters choose whatever style of stock they feel gives them the greatest, and fastest, control of the gun.
This is the environment that lends itself to the misuse and damage of a shotgun when the purpose and limitations of that shotgun are either not understood or simply ignored. It is unfortunate that in such a case it's not unusual for the shooter to blame the shotgun rather than his own lack of knowledge and/or concern.
