doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Questions about steel shot and choke tubes

Don't have to go that far. A peg for two day driven upland game hunt plus food and lodging in Wyoming is $11,900.

The rich people, that can afford the hundred thousand dollar London bespoke best guns, don't worry about anything but ammunition availability, and the reason they can take their London best guns to Argentina and Africa is because lead shot ammo is available and legal to shoot there, in those places.

I understand a large percentage of brand new London best guns are ordered with 2 3/4 inch chambers, for the reason of easier ammo availability.

I own a side by side twenty gauge Turkish shotgun. It only cost $500 brand new, but it has silver soldered barrels, three inch chambers, choke tubes, and is proofed for steel shot. It's not by any stretch of the imagination a best gun, but is a good shotgun, handles well, and I can take it anywhere on the earth shotguns are legal and buy ammo for it, and so will my grandchildren's grandchildren.

You'd expect a hundred thousand dollar Holland and Holland to do anything a five hundred dollar Huglu would do, and do it with much better style.

But that's not the case, today.

What you're looking at are luxury items for the very wealthy. They have to prove their superiority every day by what they use, eat, how they dress whom they associate with and whom their kids date and marry. The education is obtained at boarding schools where they associate with people just like themselves this assures that they will do at least as well in their lives as their parents. It's entirely different world.

So is your initial question about steel shot or class envy?

They just paid that kind of money for a shotgun do you think they really care what a box of shells cost? And you can still use lead shot in America for upland game and tungsten and bismuth will always be available.

And the people who built their shotgun were the same people who built a shotgun for their great grandfather or great great grandfather.

The cost of a gun, and the cost of ammo are two entirely different things.

One thing I've always thought would be cool to own and shoot is a nice bolt action 50 BMG, one came up about a month ago that was "affordable", just a few thousand dollars, I could have paid cash for it, but at the price of ammo I declined.

The cost of the gun is a one time fee, once i have it I will never have to buy it again, but the price of ammo is the gift that just keeps on giving, or taking in this case, I don't own a 50 BMG, and likely never will.

Several years ago I commissioned a gun maker to build me a bolt action 416 Remmington rifle, mouser action, match grade barrel, nice gun, the only reason I can afford to shoot it is because I can fire form 375 brass to reload.

TM

I try to not be envious of the very rich. They have earned their money, or inherited it from those who have earned it.

I am very glad, that luxury goods for the very rich are made, because those things serve as templates for the rest of us, and the luxury items themselves in time usually depreciate to where ordinary folks can afford them.

A shotgun, is not the most costly luxury item the wealthy purchase.

An entry level Rolls Royce Ghost starts at $250,000, which would buy a matched pair of London best guns, and that new Rolls Royce runs on unleaded gasoline, available everywhere.

Truly impressive yachts are priced in the millions, but the old standard of a forty foot cabin cruiser is about ten thousand dollars a foot today, and it will run on unleaded gasoline or diesel, regardless of how much it costs.

And private jets are priced in the tens of millions, but a perfectly good single engine airplane today is over a half a million, with twins starting at a million dollars. The jets burn the standard jet fuel at all the airports, and while the piston engine models require standard leaded avgas, that's because there's not any unleaded gasoline for sale at most airports, yet. The do gooders are working on it, and when leaded avgas is phased out, at their next major overhaul the new piston engine planes today will run on the next generation of lead free avgas.

I've bought two new Caesar Guerini over and under shotguns. They aren't best guns, but they are surely some nice, wonderful shotguns, and the bottom of both have that Fleur-de-lis mark the Italian proof house requires for steel shot proof. The have chrome lined bores, silver soldered barrels, and the Tempio has three inch chambers. I understand to not use any steel shot larger than BB and no chokes tighter than modified.

But someday, those CG guns will be busting clays and shooting birds, using common steel shot loads, and a lot of true best guns made today will be curiosities like my friend's old damascus barreled hammer guns are.

If you can't shoot the currently available and legal ammo in a gun, it's not practical for volume use, no matter how wealthy you are.

The London and Birmingham proof houses would do the British gun trade and the world a favor, by introducing a steel shot proof mark, even if were voluntary, like the Italian one is.

Best guns ought to be able to shoot cheap steel shot.

I am not a fan of post parsing.
in a nutshell, you are mistaken on every premise you are holding.

You absolutely can buy steel shot ready, (even for large sized steel shot) best quality guns from modern makers.

I'm glad to hear it.

I hate the idea of being forced to use nontoxic shot, almost as much as I'd hate not shooting a shotgun.

I still think it would be a good idea for the British and Spanish proof houses to follow the lead of the Italians have have a special proof for steel shot guns.

It won't be all that many years, before lead shot will not be generally available, even if remains legal.

Don't forget copper shot as well.
The Euro shooting community is thriving.

At every income level.

Taking your education from poor, old, non shooting, non hunting, people, with social issues, and no experience, might lead to a biased and inaccurate education.

Another question is, do the Europeans require nontoxic shot the way America is starting to require it, which today is for all waterfowl, almost all public hunting lands, and the entire State of California for hunting anything?

And I'm so against nontoxic shot, words cannot express it.

But the writing is on the wall, here in America, against lead in all forms. Lead in the gas, lead in the paint, lead toy soldiers lead glass crystal, have all went the way of asbestos in my lifetime.

Shooting in America is thriving too, but when the US military and the entire State of California is outlawing lead projectiles, it's not long before the do gooders decide that lead shot itself, is the problem.

Another problem is the recent introduction of seven dollars a box cheap steel factory loads. Americans say they like the best, and buy the cheapest. Scrap iron is much cheaper per pound than scrap lead, and if loaded steel shotgun shells become cheaper than loaded cheap lead shotgun shells, the do gooders won't have to regulate anything to make lead shotgun shells disappear from the shelves.

Every new shotgun made in the United States in the last thirty years will handle steel shot, and like it.

It's the old Belgian Brownings, and old double guns I own so many of, that are threatened with steel shot.