Sporting Guns

Quite recently I came across someone who organises shoots in wintertime. So I have been reminiscing about a few of my shooting experiences, some of which I may have mentioned previously in my blog.

            Shoots can be rough shoots where a few friends and a dog or two walk the hedgerows and copses in an effort to make birds fly and become targets for the usually country-bred marksmen.

            These are pleasant winter walks to exercise the muscles, take in the fresh air,  and to give the dogs a run.

            Should a pheasant or two be bagged, it would be destined for the oven or pot soon afterwards, and much enjoyed.

            In my family’s home in the country these pheasants were hung up in the larder by two of their tail feathers. When the birds fell to the floor they were ready to be cooked. So they were often very high, ripe, and maggoty. But that was the taste for game in those far off days. I cannot recall if it was mine.

            At that time I had a small “garden gun”. This was a bolt-action .22 bore and had little cartridges that disintegrated when the tiny shot, with the charge behind them, left the barrel. The guns were made, I suppose, for keeping the rat population under control. I loved that gun, as young boys do.

            One day, out of season and with my parents away, I saw a pair of partridges walking in the vegetable garden – and shot them. Very unsporting, out of season, and not flying, there was hell to pay in the form of the back of a clothes brush on the bottom.

            Later in life, and with a 12 bore shotgun inherited from my father, I had joined a rather smart “cocks only” end of season shoot on a friends estate.  Actually I much preferred being a beater, as this involved orderly walking through woods and tapping one’s stick (mine was of bamboo and made a good noise when using it to strike a sapling or tree) to make pheasants fly toward a line of guns.

            Anyhow, next to me on this shoot was a man who was, or had been, running Purdey – probably the smartest maker of sporting guns in England.

            He saw my gun and asked about it. It was a William Evans.

            On inspecting it he almost went into a rage. “William Evans! That’s one of the worst things that ever happened to Purdey,” he said. “William Evans should never have left us.”

            William Evans had left Purdey to set up on his own (“William Evans late of Purdey”) almost a hundred years earlier. Such is sporting memory and gunsmith history.

            My father, just before the First World War, after graduating from Wye Agricultural College, went, under Government sponsorship, to Egypt (then our Protectorate) to irrigate and grow things with Nile water in the desert – or something of that order.

            As he had omitted to take his gun, he asked his father, the great rosarian, then Vicar at Stratfieldsaye, to send it out.

            My father’s name and his Cairo address were put onto a label, and then glued to the leather gun case. George V stamps were added before the gun was posted – just like that. Try posting a gun to Egypt in these troubled times.

            I loaned the gun to the Home Guard on joining the RAF during the war.

            The cartridges then had candle wax mixed in with the shot. These were to become lethal projectiles at close quarters when and if the Germans invaded our country.

            But the gun was neglected (they do need constant and careful attention) and the barrels had become rusty by the time I managed to recover it.

            The barrels failed the “proof” test, so I had to replace them.

            The makers, William Evans, gave me a price, which, in impecunious times, was so expensive as to be quite out of the question. So I obtained quotes from the Army and Navy Stores and others.

            During this process I learned that all barrels were made and fitted at the same factory in, I think, Birmingham. Then they were returned to the gunsmiths for adornment and finishing.

            So I went for the cheapest replacement offered, which was at Gamages – a large department store at the time. They were perfect (full choke left barrel as ordered) – but without provenance.

            I gave the gun to a son, who, when stringent security regulations came into force, decided it was not worth the trouble and sold it at auction.

            None of us had any use for it any more. But that gun had a history, some of which must still be stuck to its leather case.