March
S M T W T F S
1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31
Who's Online Now
7 members (Cold1, CJF, Jimmy W, Hugh Lomas, AZMike, 1 invisible), 602 guests, and 6 robots.
Key: Admin, Global Mod, Mod
Forum Statistics
Forums10
Topics38,376
Posts544,025
Members14,391
Most Online1,258
Mar 29th, 2024
Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
Page 7 of 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 11,372
Likes: 103
Sidelock
**
Offline
Sidelock
**

Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 11,372
Likes: 103
Originally Posted By: Drew Hause


Good reads indeed. Worth noting references to shooting guns with no choke (cylinder). Really "high" birds, which have become a mania with some shooters today, weren't that common. Cylinder worked because most birds were shot at skeet range, or not a lot more--and that's still more or less the case on your typical driven shoot these days. 40 yards is an unusually tall bird. I wonder how Walsingham, Ripon etc would do on the high bird shoots, where the guns are long and heavy, and a 1 1/4 oz load is on the light side. I rather expect they would have pursued the high bird challenge as eagerly as they did on the driven shoots typical back in their day.

Last edited by L. Brown; 11/12/16 08:38 PM.
Joined: Jan 2013
Posts: 1,120
Likes: 191
Sidelock
***
Offline
Sidelock
***

Joined: Jan 2013
Posts: 1,120
Likes: 191




The British film “Shooting Party though I don’t think I should say too much about the story line, except was adapted from the novel of the same name by Elizabeth Colegate. Just to say it is a snapshot of an Edwardian country house shoot attended by members of the British aristocracy and their friends in the autumn of 1913 just prior to the outbreak of the Great War. The films attention to detail of a country house shoot was of a high standard, dress location (Knebworth House Hertfordshire) beaters keepers and every thing necessary for the shoot including a fine vintage Shooting-brake. Though there have always been doubts cast on the type of retriever dogs used in the film for that date. I became a beater for a shoot resembling this one some fifty years ago at one of the largest private estates in the County of Cheshire here in the UK even then not much had changed in the particulars and organisation of a large shoot though sadly even in the span of my lifetime that shoot is now a thing of the past. My reason for mentioning the film is in 1984 a friend of mine who worked in the Birmingham Gun trade contacted me and asked would I be prepared to lend a customer of his my Purdy shotgun. It turned out that his customer was a property master working in the British film industry and was searching for a usable antique Purdey shotgun, it had to be the type of gun an elderly member of the aristocracy would have owned around the 1900s my gun was exactly what he was looking for. After extracting the usual assurances that if there where any damage no matter how slight to the gun my friends life would become forfeit and his children and wife would be sold into slavery and any profits from the sale would of course be mine, not to harsh a deal I thought for what they where about to have on an extended loan. In reality to find a usable Purdey Bar in wood thumb lever shotgun built in 1860s, complete with its original unsleeved Damascus barrels Nitro Proof is rather a rare gun to come across yet alone borrow for the duration of a film. The gun was used in two scenes of the film firstly Sir Randolph Nettleby (James Mason) is holding it talking to Cornelius Cardew (John Gielgud) after Cardew had walked in front of the gun line with a placard, lastly in the scene after Tom Harker (Gordon Jackson) is shot Sir Randolph Nettleby’s loader is supporting it on his shoulder. The gun was not actually fired in the film because the Insurance company where not to keen for the actors to use a hundred plus year old gun it being the oldest gun on the set even though they where assured the gun was perfectly safe to use with black powder charges by the Birmingham Proof house, possibly because of the disaster that occurred on the first attempt to start filming was still very fresh in their minds. The financial reward I received for my help in solving his problem was not a large sum but enough to have some cosmetic work done on the gun.
At the time, I had no idea what the gun was to be used in but as the saying goes if only I did know then what I know now I would have asked for a film poster signed by all the actors. I do find the final scene of the film extremely haunting because it does not need much imagination to know what is approaching to take the lives of the young men in the film as we the audience are looking at it with full knowledge of the Great War to come. And just a personal note I have always believed that the decline of the English bespoke gun industry was caused in no small way by the untimely deaths of thousands upon thousands of sons on all sides from the upper middle and working classes, caused by the War “no customers after the war and no sons to continue to purchase later on” and of course the same fate was to become the artisans and craftsmen which accelerated the industries demise to the now shadow of it’s former self. The film is of a deliberate slow pace and extremely well acted though to be able to understand the English class system which I personally do find unacceptable and very difficult to rationalise as to why so few people should be so privileged and own so much, but there is always a but isn’t there, without it we would not have some of the most beautifully designed and mechanically refined sporting guns the world has seen, built by such names as Holland & Holland, Purdey, Boss, Churchill, Grant, Lancaster, Lang, the list could go on and on. Though the picture of a driven shoot painted in the film of guns at their pegs having loaders passing a reloaded gun to increase the overall take speed all surrounded by the swirl of black powder smoke and falling pheasants you can call it slaughter if you like, though Sir Randolph Nettleby does have a few words to say on that subject in the film. This film is as close as a film maker can get to looking through that window in time to an Edwardian aristocratic house shooting party in Britain.


The only lessons in my life I truly did learn from where the ones I paid for!
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 11,372
Likes: 103
Sidelock
**
Offline
Sidelock
**

Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 11,372
Likes: 103
Re the decline of the gun industry in the UK, post-WWI: I remember discussing the subject with a British gunsmith. He suggested that losing so many of the sons of the shooting classes likely resulted in a glut of second-hand guns appearing on the market after the war. It also explains the effort by makers such as Churchill (the XXV) and those that made the 2" 12ga to offer something new to compete with all the more "traditional" guns that were available after the war.

Joined: Aug 2013
Posts: 388
Likes: 1
Sidelock
**
Offline
Sidelock
**

Joined: Aug 2013
Posts: 388
Likes: 1
I liked both James Mason and John Gielgud a lot as actors. The Shooting Party was the film Mason made as far as i know. I didn't think the film was that bad, it moved slowly and thank god for that, if you want car chases and explosions every other minute, then films like this are not for you anyway. Damacus is of course correct, it is a book/film about a doomed generation, the end of the Edwardian era and the Edwardian country house set.

Joined: May 2008
Posts: 8,158
Likes: 114
Sidelock
**
Offline
Sidelock
**

Joined: May 2008
Posts: 8,158
Likes: 114
Autumn of 1913- WW1 started in August 1914-- if memory serves. Good book to read on this War to End all Wars- The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchmann


"The field is the touchstone of the man"..
Joined: Mar 2009
Posts: 2,018
Likes: 50
Sidelock
***
Offline
Sidelock
***

Joined: Mar 2009
Posts: 2,018
Likes: 50
The blaming of WWI for the decline of the Edwardian Shooting Set is overstated.

Yes many died, yes taxes made passing intact estates difficult to impossible.

However the demise of that class was economic and inevitable. Estates based on income derived from land. The farming/renting economic model changed and regardless of the war it was going to happen. While the War created other factors that accelerated it in the end it was the evolution of the agricultural economy and industrial economies that caused it.

Just as economic factors in the US have significantly altered the farming environment in my state of Kansas and massively reduced bird populations. You can argue decisions or a failure to coherently act earlier by our Wildlife and Parks has failed to cushion the decline; it is the market place in the end.


Michael Dittamo
Topeka, KS
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 11,372
Likes: 103
Sidelock
**
Offline
Sidelock
**

Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 11,372
Likes: 103
Old COL, you can thrown in the Farm Bill when it comes to what's happened to wildlife in this country. 35 million acres set aside in CRP didn't reverse trends in modern agriculture, but it did take a whole lot of land out of row crops and into grasses, trees, etc. Of course the govt gives and the govt takes away, and they've been busily taking away CRP for the last several years--to the point that about a third of those 35 million acres are now back growing row crops. Couple the loss of CRP with the desire to tile away wet spots, rip out fencelines, raise livestock in confinement buildings rather than allowing them to clean up waste grain in the fields, the economy of scale (bigger equipment justified by a single farmer farming more acres) etc . . . all bad news for wildlife in general. And upland game populations in particular.

When we first got CRP, hunters got a significant benefit. But as those fields went from corn or soybeans to grass, I noticed that farmers were working their crop fields more and more intensively. Taking out the micro-habitats where a pheasant or a covey of quail could hide. And I thought at the time: "God help us if we ever lose CRP." That's where we are now, and given the economy in general and trends in DC, it's unlikely that we're ever going to regain those millions of acres of habitat we've lost. Nor all the little spots that used to produce the occasional bird.

Last edited by L. Brown; 11/15/16 09:12 AM.
Joined: May 2008
Posts: 8,158
Likes: 114
Sidelock
**
Offline
Sidelock
**

Joined: May 2008
Posts: 8,158
Likes: 114
I agree- 100%. The smaller (80-120 A.) family farms here in Central MI that produced pheasants, and small game, and possibly with stream, ponds and swamps un-drained, waterfowl, are all nearly gone today, replaced by the "General Motors" farming operations: 3000 head dairy cattle, milked 3 times in 24 hours, computer tagged and controlled feed. The only thing that hasn't changed is the cowshit--

I remember the Soil Bank era- way better conditions for upland birds to hatch eggs, etc. Also, as a confirmed varmint shooter/hunter but NOT a trapper for pelts) I realize that every coyote or fox or raccoon or possum or skunk that "vaporize" with my SAKO .243Win. and 55 grain Hornady loads- is one less threat afield to ground nesting game. However, the "Airborne Prize Patrol"- crows mainly, some turkey vultures as well, also destroy pheasant eggs in the nest in late Spring.

I have resigned myself, at age 75, that the only pheasants I will most likely ever shoot again here in MI are pen-raised game farm raised-- easy to determine when you clean them, with the layers of yellow fat from all the corn and related feed they stuff down while in captivity. Sorta like the old line about the chronic gambler who lived all week for the Friday night crap game held in a local "blind pig"- and known for it's rigged dice and crooked "management"- When asked why he kept going there, in spite of his knowing all this- he replied: "Yeah, but it's the only game in town!"--


"The field is the touchstone of the man"..
Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 2,814
Likes: 1
Sidelock
**
Offline
Sidelock
**

Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 2,814
Likes: 1
I am SO glad I live in Kansas...

Joined: Apr 2005
Posts: 916
Likes: 1
Sidelock
**
Offline
Sidelock
**

Joined: Apr 2005
Posts: 916
Likes: 1
Originally Posted By: King Brown
Appreciate all these perspectives of the commanders and generals and their armies. I put a lot of stock in the American historian Eric Atkinson and the British Antony Beevor, gifted writers whose impeccable research from all diaries embraces the above.


King, I can't find anything on an Eric Atkinson. Do you mean Rick Atkinson? Full given name Lawrence Rush Atkinson.

Page 7 of 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Link Copied to Clipboard

doublegunshop.com home | Welcome | Sponsors & Advertisers | DoubleGun Rack | Doublegun Book Rack

Order or request info | Other Useful Information

Updated every minute of everyday!


Copyright (c) 1993 - 2024 doublegunshop.com. All rights reserved. doublegunshop.com - Bloomfield, NY 14469. USA These materials are provided by doublegunshop.com as a service to its customers and may be used for informational purposes only. doublegunshop.com assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions in these materials. THESE MATERIALS ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANT-ABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. doublegunshop.com further does not warrant the accuracy or completeness of the information, text, graphics, links or other items contained within these materials. doublegunshop.com shall not be liable for any special, indirect, incidental, or consequential damages, including without limitation, lost revenues or lost profits, which may result from the use of these materials. doublegunshop.com may make changes to these materials, or to the products described therein, at any time without notice. doublegunshop.com makes no commitment to update the information contained herein. This is a public un-moderated forum participate at your own risk.

Note: The posting of Copyrighted material on this forum is prohibited without prior written consent of the Copyright holder. For specifics on Copyright Law and restrictions refer to: http://www.copyright.gov/laws/ - doublegunshop.com will not monitor nor will they be held liable for copyright violations presented on the BBS which is an open and un-moderated public forum.

Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5
(Release build 20201027)
Responsive Width:

PHP: 7.0.33-0+deb9u11+hw1 Page Time: 0.081s Queries: 35 (0.057s) Memory: 0.8728 MB (Peak: 1.8988 MB) Data Comp: Off Server Time: 2024-03-29 14:56:26 UTC
Valid HTML 5 and Valid CSS