Gentlemen: Those of you who ordered the Special $99.95 Signed Limited Edition of my Parker Guns: Shooting Flying and the American Experience (Collector Books of Paducah KY, 2008), should have your book(s) in about 10 days. They are curently on a shipping dock at my publisher in KY. I am driving down Monday to pick up 250 Limited Editions first thing Tuesday to satisfy pre-publication orders. Autographed books should be in the mail next Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday (at the latest), and then it's up to the USPS.

If you ordered a $49.95 Trade Edition from Barnes & Nobel, Borders, or a gun show dealer or on the Internet, my publisher will drop ship these books to your seller starting next week. I have nothing to do with sales of the Trade Edition.

PLEASE, if you have moved since you placed your order for a $99.95 Special Signed Limited Edition, send me your new address via e-mail:

knightofthetrigger@yahoo.com

This has been a 5-year almost-full-time project come to fruition. I will be at the Vintage Cup in MD for sure, and there's an outside chance I'll be at the Orvis Cup in NY. Thank you all.

Ed Muderlak

Congratulations on your most recent offering Ed! I'm looking forward to my signed limited edition with great anticipation.

Ed, I will try and order one of the trade edition here in England. I have your book, 'When Ducks Were Plenty' and enjoyed it immensely. It cleard up one of my mysteries as to what happened to the passenger pigeon. I'm always looking out for good books on American guns to add to my collection of reading matter. Lagopus.....

Thanks for your interest. And you will enjoy my chapter entitled "Apple Pie Versus Spotted Dick," which shows how the American experience with shooting flying was nurtured but often disparaged by your lords-of-the-manors' younger sons and remittance men who crossed the big pond to sport with their newly invented precussion scatterguns starting in the 1830s. We went our seperate ways after the Civil War as American makers got with the breechloader program in the late 1860s, Parker Brothers being first and foremost. Shooting flying in the UK came to be synonymous with driven birds, and Spotted Dick your iconic dessert; meanwhile, rough shooting continues to be as American as Apple Pie.

As to buying the Trade Edition my new book overseas, if you Google "Parker Guns: Shooting Flying and the American Experience Muderlak" you will find Internet dealers in Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Canada, and GB already taking orders for delivery soon:

Try this website: herewardbooks.com.uk

The $99.95USD Special Signed Limited Edition costs $9.80 to ship Priority Mail in the USA (I charge $7.50), and if after checking the Internet site you decide to order the faux Leather autographed Ltd. Ed., I think International Priority would be about $25USD. Given the value of the USD against the pound, both the $49.95 Trade Edition and $99.95 Limited Edition ought to be bargain basement prices compared with similiar gun books. I only sell the Special Signed Ltd Ed. and take PayPal at my e-mail address:

knightofthetrigger@yahoo.com Ed Muderlak

Thanks Ed, I will get onto my local book Dealer; they are pretty good at sourcing my more obscure wants so this one should be easy for them with all the above information. Lagopus.....

Well boys, I just went down to Paducah with Ed to pick up the limited editions and they're stunning. He's going to start shipping first thing in the morning so everybody that bought one be on the lookout in the mailbox.

Destry

Are they in the Barnes & Noble stores yet ?

Ed, looking forward to a new read. Tim

The $49.95 Trade Edition has been sold pre-publication (discounted, of course) by B&N and Borders, et al, and on Internet sites, Amazon.com, et al for going on 3 months. When Destry and I were in Paducah KY yesterday picking up the first print run of the Special Signed Limited Edition (which had arrived in KY from the printer in TN last Friday afternoon), the Trade Editions just arrived by another truck load (Tuesday). My publisher, Collector Books, now has to ship the Trade Ed's to the retail sellers, which will take a few days.

Meanwhile, I'm back home on the IL/WI stateline, signing and packaging up pre-sales of the Ltd Ed, which will start going out in batches by USPS this afternoon (all should be in the mail by Friday). This new book is oversize like The Parker Story, and weighs 3 lbs 14 ozs, a full half pound more that Parker Guns: The "Old Reliable." Whether one buys a Trade Edition from a big box store or on the internet discounted from the $49.95 cover price, or an autographed Limited Edition at $99.95 from yours truely...well, the book is a done deal; what a relief!

"SOCKS" (esso si keh es) It is what it is.

I'll take some pictures of the Limited Edition and put one up for Buy It Now on eBay so the finished product can be seen. The cover artwork of the Trade Edition is all over the Internet. I don't know how to put pictures on this website and I am blocked from the Parker website. If someone can help me out I'll be able to e-mail pictures by noon, but I don't have remote storage.

EDM

Ed: If you don't mind me asking. Why are you blocked from the Parker site? Is it because that you are selling your book? I ordered mine from you last yeat at the Parker/Vintager's & am reall looking forward to receiving it.

Best Regards, George

My much anticipated copy arrived this afternoon, 9/6/08 via the USPS. Thus far I have only had time to page through it and I must say it appears to be well worth the wait...beautiful pictures, a ton of words in Ed's easy-to-read prose in a very well put together quality book.

A pleasant surprise and as an added "Patron's bonus", Ed also included a trade copy of his "Parker Brothers: Knight of the Trigger" book as well three reprint catalogs of Parker guns from his Old Reliable Publishing Co. A nice gesture on Ed's part!

Thank you Ed!
Greg Baehman

Ed asked me to post a few pictures of the new volume so you guys could take a look:

Hard at work shipping them out:


And a few of the book itself:











I've been reading mine the past few days and it's really an amazing piece of work. And it's not just about Parkers either, it's full of the history of live pigeon shooting, early clay target shoot, the history of cartridge shotguns in the US, and tons of other vintage gun related information.

Lovely cover - nothing better than having a gun pointed at you.

Lovely posting, nothing better than having some azzhole insult something a good friend has worked five years of his life to produce without even having taken the time to read it.

The cover art was taken from a vintage illustration so it's been around a long time without harming anyone, I think you're safe.


Destry

Ed, I think that cover is excellent, with the muzzel pointing out. Very cool.

Tim

What I really meant to say is the title is particularly dumb. Shooting Flying? What's missing - pronouns? Adjectives? I give up.

I agree, it's gotta be tough to see some azzhole rain on the latest
back-patting exercise by your personal guru. Chin up.

You obviously don't study the old time literature much. The phrase "shooting flying" is common, that's what they called it when it was first being done. The lock time on early guns wasn't fast enough to allow shooting on the wing, but when they developed something that was and began trying it then it was called "shooting flying" hence the title.

Again somebody on here spouting off without any idea of what they're actually talking about. Tell you what Greg, you spend five years working on a gun book then get somebody to pay you to publish it and I'll give you my slightly more educated opinion without talking straight out of my anal orifice like you're doing now.


Destry

I don't want that book.
I NEED that book!!!!

Ed's NEW book is available right off the DoubleGun book rack...

http://doublegunshop.com/bookrack.htm

Cost is $49.95 plus shipping ($6 for continental USA)

Thanks, Dave. And you guys thought Dave was shutting down the thread for promoting a product! Again, congratulations, Ed.

Thanks Ed. I received my copy today and it looks like it will be a great read and very informative. Thanks also for the catalogs and the copy of Knight of the Trigger. It was unexpected and a very nice gesture.
Destry, thanks for explaining the phrase "Shooting Flying". I never realized what it met.
Gordon Green

Post deleted by Run With The Fox

'Pteryplegia: Or, The Art of Shooting Flying" first penned, according to Col. H.P. Sheldon, in 1727, by Mr. Markland, A. B., writes...
"Five gen'ral sorts of Flying Marks there are;
The Lineals two, Traverse and Circular;
The fifth Oblique, which I may vainly teach;
But practice only perfectly can reach.
When a bird comes directly to your face,
Contain your fire a while, and let her pass,
Unless some trees behind you change the case.
If so, a little space above her head
Advance the muzzle, and you strike her dead.
Ever let shot pursue where there is room;
Marks, hard before, thus easy will become.
But, when the bird flies from you in a line,
With little care, I may pronounce her thine,
Observe the rule before, and neatly raise
Your piece, till there's no Open Under-space
Betwixt the object and the Silver Sight;
Then send away, and timely stop the flight."

...and is as timely today as it was when written.

Thanks Dean-o. Nice to know you spend time in the library, can't be restoring those old Stutz Bearcats all the while! Great literature from the past, and I am guessing he was a Limey-most likely his poem gave them the "Bum Belly Beak Bang" leading theory-RWTF

RWTF, the burgeoning shelves of the "library" are only a few slippered steps from the stuffed leather chair where I sit, HP notebook on lap, typing this. That book, Pteryplegia, is a recent purchase. Derrydale, 1931, "No. 1 of 500, 200 of which have been coloured by hand have been printed by Eugene V. Connett at the Derrydale Press"
I was damn lucky to get it.

Dean

Amen to that Dean- anytime you can get a Derrydale in readable condition today, consider yourself blessed. Like to read about about the late Mr. Connett-his start in the publishing business, etc. If you collect, read and study Hemingway as I do-one advantage is that he only had ONE publisher all his writing life-Scribner-simplifies the search. RWTF

Dean and others: If you scroll up to the pictures Destry posted you will see that the frontispiece of Markland's 1727 poem is also the frontis of my Parker Guns: Shooting Flying. The image is from my original 1767 copy of the book, which, believe it or not, I bought on eBay for less than I had paid years ago for my Derrydale reprint.

The term "Shooting Flying" traces to the title of a wood engraving in Richard Blome's The Gentlemans Recreation (London, 1686), which predates the invention of the possessive apostrophy and is thought to be the first English language reference to the sport (and is the first known image). (There is a book in Italian from the 1580s that mentions shooting flying in text but no picture.) Blome's "Shooting Flying" is pictured on page 28 of my new book, the image being from my slide of the original in the rare book room at the National Sporting Library in Middleburg VA. nsl.org

"Shooting Flying" is an anachronistic term that by the 1800s in America, morphed into "shooting on the wing" and "wing shooting," which likewise are incomplete sentences, but fairly describe what's going on. "Shooting Flying" was distinguished by Blome in the late 1680s from "Shooting Sitting" (also pictured in my book), which we now call "ground swatting." EDM

Thanks for filling in the blanks Ed. "Shooting Flying" far surpasses "Shooting Sitting" for sport and in the spirit of fair play . . . but I don't want to open that wound again. It was covered quite eloquently by both sides here several months ago.

DAM16SxS: Anyone who holds back on a turkey until he takes off ain't gonna have much more than ham for a main course on Thanksgiving. And Destry tells me that Virginia rail would rather take a load of sixes on the run than get up and go, so you pretend that they are rabbits. We should remember that in the days of flint and steel, the flash in the pan jumped the "sitting" ducks, and by the time the charge ignited and the shot was on its way, the birds were flying. Thus "shooting sitting" was often more challenging than taking incommers with wings braced over the decoys, using a modern splattermatic. EDM

Turkeys certainly are the exception, there's no arguement there. But when it comes to grouse, woodcock, waterfowl, pheasant and yes, even railbirds - "Shooting Flying" is the true sporting method of taking game. We are not shooting fowl in order that we and our families don't starve, but for sport - and if we need to kill something so badly that we must resort to "Shooting Sitting" (ground-swatting, in your own words) we are a sad lot. The exception, of course, is the wounded game that scurries for the tall grass or brush pile for concealment.

There, I've opened up the very wound I said I wouldn't.
In all good intent, Dean

Post deleted by Run With The Fox

There are pigeon rings, to my knowledge, in the good ol' US of A in Pensylvania, NY, MD, VA, NC, and IN. There is no greater sport than standing alone to the mark (everyone starts at 31 yards). And everyone else is watching. You say, "Trapper ready?"

"Ready..."

"Pull"

And a dun grey projectile springs at random from one of the array of nine traps spaced 5 yards apart and "drives" for the nearest 18-inch high boundrary fence about 15 yards from the traps (or sometimes comes right at you!).

Bang! Bang!

Two shots required (even if you blank him with the first barrel), or the traper will mark him "lost bird." Kill him in bounds and you score; A dead bird outside the fence is as much a "lost bird" than if you missed him clean. Kill 5 birds in a row and step back a yard for your next 5 bird round. "Races" are usually 20 birds, although some venues hold 25 bird competitions. Kill 23 of 25 and you probably win it outright. Twenty-five in a row is almost unheard of.

This is a tough sport with no 25-, 50-, or 100-straight patches awarded. As a minimum, each "pull" costs $7.00 or more, so it's not for the financially challenged. And then there's the mandatory stakes and side bets (although some mitigation for seniors and women). This is not a "personal best" or handicap-type sport. Everyone starts even at 31 yards, and steps back a yard according to proven excelence on the given day, by going 5 straight. While not for everyone, I find live birds (euphemistically called "flyers") as a refreshing break from the "machine shooting" of Trap and Skeet, where the targets are a far cry from real life presentations of wing shooting, shooting on the wing, or "shooting flying," which started this tread. The variations of sporting clays, five stand, and ZZ Birds have added interest to shotgun competitions, but, still, the targets start out fast and get slower, the exact opposite of real-life shooting flying.

As for pigeons being a "precious wildlife resource," beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, but in most major cities the pigeons rank with rats and cockroaches on the wildlife hit parade. Different strokes... EDM

Thanks Ed- especially for confirming why (IMO) barn pigeons and crows with the gun(s) you hunt game birds with-are the best practice for the wingshooter- your analysis of clays losing velocity over distance and time-at odds with the black spurred old Rooster fezzant you boot out from a half-frozen cattail marsh in late Nov- or when the scaups and buffleheads strafe your sets of Schmidt and Soule "foolies" on Saginaw Bay at Thanksgiving week-end, or (and this is guestimate, as MI will have a dove season when Hell Freezes Over apparently=-mourning doves in flight with a tailwind moving them into Mach range- I didn't know that many States had live bird rings-or about the yardage- I had heard somewhere about the two shots mandatory- is that because some live bird guns (a la Nash Buckingham's Bo Whoop Becker-Fox) had no safety, and by firing both barrels, even though the "flyer" may have dropped like a rock inside the fence, then the shotgun is considered to be "in a safer mode" than if only one tube was fired? Your knowledge and insight into the shooting sports is like the Mississippi River- both deep and wide, and I thank you for sharing it so generously here. RWTF

Guys used and still use no safety guns for pigeon shooting because there's so much money involved. When just one fumble on the safety could cost you the purse in the match. Buckingham was a live pigeon shooter but I think the lack of safety on the Becker guns was just personal preference more than the fact that he used them on flyers.

The two shot thing is just a safety issued, they don't want somebody walking off the mark with a loaded gun. I believe it's really a carry over from muzzle loading days that's just stayed with the sport.

Destry

What is failed to be said, is that most of these shoots are held in secret. Not that there's big money walking around, it's live targets as targets.

I wouldn't necessarily call them "secret", they don't hang big posters up announcing the matches that's for certain. I mean that's just asking for the roads to be lined with bunny huggers and bleeding hearts.

The last big public match was the Labor Day Tournament at Hegins, PA. They shot that one on the baseball field for years until the PETA peckerheads finally wore the city officials out and they told them they couldn't have there anymore. The tournament still goes on and still draws a crowd but it's shot on a private club now.

Sorta makes me think about a page from an older vintage Gene Hill article- names for groups of critters- if memory serves, Flock of Geese, Pity of Doves, a Pride of Lions, and, as I love to obliterate "Black Ducks"- a Murder of Crows- to which I add my call: "A Shitload of Pigeons" PETA- "Peckerheads Exhibiting Tightning *&^holes" . You ever shot "flyers" Destry? Any restrictions on bore and load size. A friend said the best premium loads money can buy are the nickel plated International Pigeon loads-He shoots a Perrazi 12 O/U- one of the few O/U's I've ever held that felt like a lively shotgun in my hands- the other was a 20 gauge Woodward- both out of my pocketbook range, but a man can dream for free, right?? RWTF

Oh yeah, shot flyers quite a few times. I've got a match against Mr. Kimble coming up in January out at the Philadelphia Gun Club actually.

I've never heard much about load restrictions but you can't shoot 10 gauge guns anymore. And at Philly you've got to shoot club shells (bismuth only) because their ring faces the river.

A close friend is a member so I get an invite sometimes, otherwise they'd never let me anywhere near the place. First club I ever went to that you had to wear a jacket and tie just to walk downstairs in the clubhouse.


Destry

When each "Pull" costs $7.00 and up, it's easy to spend $600 or more for a day's "targets" and ammo, without miss-and-outs, bets and side bets. I have been with the "good ol' boys" who have one or two rings and I've been in the presence of greatness...7 rings, country club-like, gratis food for the epicure and an open bar, card playing rooms, and a calcatta Friday nite, taking into account Thursday's and Friday's scores plus the reputation of the shooters, where first choice can cost upwards of $16,500 and, according to my guesstimate, they raised a quarter mil, cash, 85% to the winning bidder, and 15% to his choice shooter.

When you consider that the greater mass of trap/skeet shooters reload their own shells and pay a relative pittance for a 25-clay round, I'd say that $7.00 per flyer is on a whole different level, so much so that a great many shooters use 1 1/4-oz Hevi-shot loads at $2.00 each, which computes to $11.00 for every released bird. This is the sport of kings, and King Juan Carlos of Spain is the patron of the sport. I am 67 years old so I slide by the mandatory betting as a senior, and being blind in my right eye (after a lifetime of right-eye-dominant right-handed shooting), I am not competitive as a lefty. Nevertheless, I pay the price once or twice a year just to match myself against some of the greatest wing shots in the world. There's a picture in my new book of Howard Miller (now deceased, of Miller SST fame) drawing a bead at Hegins PA, with my Parker GH pigeon gun (Miller SST, of course). Howard was a great shot in his day.

This is not a "secret" sport but a very private sport. One must be invited. I love it. I wish I had discovered "flyers" when I was young and in possession of all my hand-to-eye coordination. Now my "winnings" are simply to be in the presence of some of the best latter-day knights of the trigger.

Money can magnify importance. Think of the drooling idiots on that TV program where,with great drama, they simply open suitcases. Suppose the top-dollar suitcase held $100; would anyone watch? Now suppose a top gun steps to the mark with real money on the line; a whole different sort of tension than for some handicap shooter who chances to be "right at the right time" at the Grand American Handicap lottery. EDM

ED, I got your books yesterday and boy, are they great. Thank you for another great book on Parkers. Frank