doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Decline of the Side-by-Side

My long range plan is to sell all my SXS guns and keep just two O/Us... 12 and 20 Berettas. Sold three sxs guns in the last few months.

People say I shoot my O/Us better anyway.

Wanna buy a Francotte sxs 12 anybody?

The video makes some good points. Like Gil, I'm looking for the guns to be bought at 10% of their value. Here's another view of the auction state in the UK UK Auctions .

Ken

The popularity of O/U against SxS is simply a matter of promotion by the shooting press . I would like to correct the Novice gun salesman. You point a shotgun at your clay /bird , you DO NOT aim.
Side by sides can shoot standard proof steel cartridges exactly the same as a standard proof O/U .
The gunshops here in England do not value SxS highly because there is very little demand to buy . Write a few articles such as read in the superb publication DGJ and you could then watch the value of SxS's increase . A well made H&H , Purdey or Boss etc., still commands good money . In fact many post WW11 Birmingham SxS will still cost the inflation increased price that they were new 70 years ago . A BSA boxlock retailed for about $5 in 1953 but a good condition ( not new obviously ) it would cost you $3,000 possibly over here today.

I�ll give you a hundred...


_____________________
...Canadian

I belong to a couple of hunting sights and I'm pretty much considered and eccentric old fart that I'd even consider a sxs a good waterfowl shotgun let alone for use on predators, even more so for thinking two triggers are better than one. O/U are somewhat accepted I think because of there proliferation on the trap and skeet fields, but have one with two triggers and it is a pariah.

I love them and they work for me, but I'm old (62 licensed hunting seasons). I have time to wait for the right shot, experience to bring birds in closer and don't consider success by a full limit. A great day is a couple ducks for dinner and a called coyote or two during the day. I always have tomorrow. Even when I was working I'd take weeks at a time during hunting season for trips rarely having to rush out on the weekend and compete with the masses or get myself into places the average hunter couldn't get to with his 16ft outboard duck boat and huge spread of decoys, a small spread in a little backwater that I had to get out and pull the canoe or skiff into produced birds.

The birds look a little rumpled, they traveled a mile or so in a backpack with a halfdozen decoys.



An ounce of NP BB's will ruin a little Quail munchers day, this one happens to have a rifle barrel too incase he decides to take in the view a ways out.

I visited Portland OR over Christmas. Was astonished to see a very fat wild cayote walking down the street with an arrogant swagger and a collar. Turns out Portlandia is humane; they put radio collars on the cayotes in the city limits. That doesn't keep them from breeding like rabbits and hunting down domestic cats.

Munching down domestic cats is a very welcome service I would think. That "quail muncher" probably saved more quail lives that it took, when it was munching on, or at least scarring the bejesus out of, countless other mammals that are better quail munchers than he.

Gun Library--Our area Cabela's has quite a few overpriced -IMO anyway_ side-by-sides-- They have a nice looking, albiet heavy Parker DHE- 12- 28" Titanic barrels, beavertail forarm, PG, skeleton buttplate, DT, EJ, and on the tag is noted "Refinished By DelGrego.

I asked the "Librarian" if they had a signed letter on letterhead from Del Grego to document this- He said- "No, but the man they bought it from told them it was a DelGrego re-do". Nice gun, NO. 2 frame, a tad heavy for a field gun. but worth $6500?? RWTF

The situation is even worse for side-by-side flintlock and percussion shotguns. They have been obsolete for an even longer period of time, and replaced by more efficient cartridge firing guns. That's why you can't even give them away.

If the demand for solid wood and steel guns finished by expensive hand labor is declining, that just indicates poor taste and bad judgement to me. I like them even better when they have those dangerous Damascus barrels that would cost as much as a small car to duplicate today.

BrentD tells us once again that coyotes are actually good for wild bird populations. Here's a few pics of coyotes saving game birds from death by lead poisoning. Has anyone considered that game bird populations have fallen dramatically ever since nutty ecologists like BrentD started managing the resource?:

Yeah, I wish.
O.M