I wanted to write about a new shotgun. She's Italian and she sits upstairs in a safe waiting for her first time in the field for a chance to powder some clays before she has to kill. She's already shown an aversion to my powder puff reloads which worried me a little but not now.
So she's going to be an expensive date. She's going to want factory shells and my lust to feel her kick in my hands will make me plod off to the store for them just to make her happy. Like the first Christmas when I was really in love with an indifferent ingénue.
Having been built with an inertia engine to keep her chamber filled semi-automatically, she’s going to need the crisp, lively pop of a factory load to digest them properly. Also she’ll need to be fully stoked with 1 and 1/8 ounce loads of shot to perform her best for me.
Luckily for me, she's as light as a walking cane and that means she won't be all that fun to shoot very often at the skeet field as she'll ride me hard and leave me a little sore after just a few rounds. No she'll be in it for the hunt mainly and not the ground covering of empty shells for which skeet and the other clay games are known.
For that there’s the family of Remington 1100’s that reside in the same safe beside their adopted, Italian sister. The twelve gauge 1100 there is a humble, hard working American that will shoot any shell I ask of him…he, yes he, if you saw him you’d know why I know he’s a he. As a poor abused bastard he was adopted by me from a pawnshop, brought back to life, and shot with regularity.
The 1100’s are gas operated which means they are heavier and softer shooting which in turn means you can waste hour after hour and shell after shell without hurting your shoulder. My fellow here shoots the 7/8 of an ounce reloads I manufacture for him just fine without protest unlike his new sister.
But the darling of the 1100’s is the equally robust, though somewhat sleeker, 28 gauge who has enamored me so much that I‘ve acquired two as I’m hoping the boy will come to love his own, as I love mine. She, yes she, consumes only ¾ of an ounce of shot for each shell she fires making her a sweetheart that pretty much shoots herself with me being there just to hold her.
When you step down in gauge it becomes not harder to break a target, or kill a bird, but somehow better. When you’re ready though, you reach for the .410. Mine is an over-under Browning since I long ago foolishly sold my 1100 in .410 bore as it’s correctly called. If she were called by gauge, she would be a not so sexy sounding 68 gauge.
She is not fickle by design, as she’ll receive any shell that will fit inside her chamber and send the miniscule ½ ounce of shot load out her muzzle. She’s mean enough to powder targets for you and gentle enough on you that you when you miss it’s completely your own fault. That’s her mystique, that when you do miss, your friends all nod and commiserate because she IS a .410.
Well, they all have their place in my heart; it’s just that right now, Little Miss Italia holds the apple of my eye even though she hates my pitiful offerings to her. She’ll get me to the store and I’m eager to do it for her so she better treat me right this spring when it’s just her and me and turkey or two.
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