doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Parker Bros pigeon gun

The European shoots did not / do not use the US style box that tosses the bird or stings it.

I see the Winchester pigeon load information above and notice the absence of any #8 shot offerings. Homer most certainly shot 8's in both barrels at this and all other flyers he shot at. He frequently quoted a favorite quip......
"If you want to Kill pigeons shoot 7 1/2s; if you want to WIN Pigeon shoots , shoot 8's"
(whether he was the original author of the line or not is still a question).

Thanks, Paul. Good stuff.

SRH

The Ithaca SxS was a big departure from the gun Homer shot prior to going to work for Lou Smith. He shot a 30" pre war Browning superposed trap gun with light barrels. The gun had the low step 7/16" rib Browning advertised as the "anti-crossfire rib" in pre war advertisements. Homer had replaced the wide bottom beavertail of the trap guns from that period with a long narrow forend to lighten the front end.

He developed a relationship with Beretta later in life and finished his career with a 3EELL gun with two sets of 28" barrels.
The guns featured straight stocks @ 1 7/16" x 1 7/16" with NO cast or offset and little or no down pitch. Barrell weight was kg. 1.460 or so for each set. One set choked @ .028 and .036 for American rings, and the second @ .018 and .032 for Europe.

Unique to the guns was a "ramped" or rounded step at the rear of the rib and slightly higher post than any ribs ever offered by Beretta at the time on their "Best" guns.

He was plagued with recoil problems with the gun, and turned to fellow East Alton Ill. resident , Jesse Edwards for the installation of 2 Edwards Recoil Reducers in the buttstock.
A common practice among some ATA All Americans of the period.
The result was a Very Butt heavy, short barreled gun.
His speed to the birds was still a stroke of lightening.

His shell of choice from my meeting him in 1976 until his last shoot shortly before his death was the Federal "Flyer load " of the period initially catalogued as the F124 8 and shown as a 3 1/4 dr 1 1/4oz 1220 fps non plated lead shot. He had nothing good to say about the only domestic competitor of the time , the Winchester Super Pigeon.....

That is Western Cartridge Co. The Super-X 12-gauge 3-inch Live Pigeon Load with #7 or #7 1/2 Lubaloy shot was introduced in 1929, three years before the Olins bought up the defunct Winchester Repeating Arms Co. They kept the Winchester and Western lines distinct, though by the mid-1930s the Winchester Super-Speed and RANGER came to pretty much mirror the Western Super-X and Xpert, and are stamped with the same Western patent numbers.



By 1980 we begin seeing ammo labeled Winchester-Western and then eventually the Western name disappears.

That's the information I was looking for. Thanks so much for sharing a little of your experiences with one of the great pigeon shots.

SRH

Researcher mentions the ill advised Remington 3200 28" Live Bird gun, which is rare and collectable, but not a modern live bird gun. Another poster mentions the light barrel 28"Beretta SO pigeon guns which are from another era, not popular today. I have one of those Beretta light pigeon guns and wish I could shoot it well, but it just isn't a good gun for modern box birds. Oddly, I will be shooting box birds tomorrow and will be using a K32 with the rare 29" pigeon barrels bored about .030 and .035, the tightest chokes I can hit a pigeon with at my advanced age and depleted physical condition. My Parker PHE trap with short vent rib barrels will be my backup. Both are crossover guns. The American pigeon shooters of the forties and fifties were turned on to short barrels by the Europeans who shot not only short barrels, but very light guns and heavy loads. I think they conditioned themselves by shooting thousands of songbirds in the off season with these same guns and loads.

Good practice in the off seasons- twitty birds. Here we can shoot blackbirds, but NOT redwing blackbirds. year around. Did they use the same heavier loads as they do for flyers in competition?? RWTF

Well, we have certainly drug this thread off the OP's question as to what constitutes a Parker Bros. "Pigeon Gun"?

OK- how about this?: Any side-by-side double barrel shotgun made by Parker Brothers in Meriden, Ct. that can kill pigeons in a big money shooting match. RWTF