A Pleasant Surprise

"... it was doubtless made for an opinionated older man past his greatest strength but still enthusiastic, with good taste and a limited budget."   John Hill 

The January/February issue of Shoorting Sportsman magazine arrived the other day and after dinner I sat down to page through the new issue.  Imagine my surprise when, turning the page, I saw the word "Sidley".  "Ha!" I thought.  "Someone else has a Sidley."  And then I looked at the photo and realized it was MY Sidley!  Of course the author was Steve Bodio - and I knew the rest.  What a pleasant surprise.

Shooting Sportsman, Jan/Feb 2013, pp. 102

As readers of this blog know, the Sidley came to me from Steve Bodio in a "trade" earlier this year. I  subsequently had good success with it in my local grouse and snipe coverts.  Since then I've had no luck finding any reference to then name "Sidley" anywhere.  It is probably the name of a English ironmonger who decided to market some shotguns under his own name.  The name engraved on the action and barrels of my boxlock remains a mystery.

Morning snipe, afternoon grouse.

You may be shooting too quickly on snipe.  If memory serves, an old snipe hunter explained, "First they zig, and then they zag, then they shit, and after that they straighten out and you shoot 'em."  I spent many happy hours snipe hunting on the flats of the Skagit, but unfortunately I didn't know this technique. -- Personal correspondence from Gerry Cox

A brace of snipe on the counter.

Went after snipe on Sunday morning and grouse in the afternoon with my son who was visiting from Portland.  I can't , nay won't, say exactly where we hunted the snipe. Look for marshy country and cross your fingers that they are in.   I killed the first snipe on the first flush with one shot from the right barrel on Sidley.  I'd rather not say how many shells were expended by both of us before Garrett managed to drop the second one.  Once again, the open right barrel on the Sidley proved it's worth.

Two snipe in the field with the 20GA boxlock.

In the afternoon we drove up high to a spot I know for grouse.  Erdos was past tired after slogging through the muck all morning - but he hunted hard for us and we (Garrett) killed two birds.  On the first flush, two birds went up with Erdos on point, I hit one at some distance, feathers flew and the bird wobbled and glided into the forest.   Did not find him until we managed to flush him about an hour later from where he'd hidden in a tree.  Garrett dropped him.  Of course it is hard to know if it was the same bird, but we both thought it had to be.  We hunted more and flushed another four birds, one of which Garrett also managed to drop.

A brace of grouse taken up high.

Not a bad day at all, two snipe in the morning and two grouse in the afternoon. 

Gun Trading

Trading is a great way to do business, no money exchanges hands and (hopefully) everyone gets what they want. The problem is finding someone who has what you want and is willing to pass it on and that same someone must want something you have and that you are willing to give up.

W. R. Sidley, 20 GA British boxlock  with 30" barrels and chambered for 2 1/2" shells. 

Recently, Stephen Bodio and I have been corresponding about guns, hunting and life in general. Our mutual friend Gerry (who introduced us to one another) knows that I've been looking to replace my 20 GA Citori Superlight with a SxS boxlock (preferably British) and he also happened to believe that Steve might be interested in thinning his battery.   Steve recently acquired a gun that makes his 20 GA British boxlock redundant in his own battery.  Bodio got this very interesting shotgun in a trade a few years ago. He wrote about it on his blog under the heading Gun Deal.

British 10 GA - Steve's ideal in a sitting turkey gun.

 Based on Gerry's suggestion, I suggested to Steve that he might have a gun that I might be interested in. Steve quickly constructed a rather interesting trade.  He was willing to trade his light weight 20 GA boxlock (with elegantly long 30" barrels and beautiful wood ) for a 10 GA Damascus barrelled gun that he sees himself using for turkeys. Of course the glitch is that I don't own a 10 GA, Damascus barrelled or otherwise, so how are we to trade?  Steve had his eye on a 10 GA that he wanted and quoted me the price.  I sent him the funds for the 10 GA (plus the cost of shipping the twenty to me) and before I knew it the Sidley boxlock was at N. L. Heineke's shop in Laramie.

The Sidley arrived in Laramie - on the leather covered counter at N.L. Heineke.

Nathan Heineke in his shop - a former bank building - looking for some 2 1/2" 20 GA shells.

Steve's twenty (now mine) is indeed a very elegant and light gun. When I first picked it up I was astounded by how light it was and good it felt in the hand.  Light guns are not necessarily favourites of experienced gunners - that's because they tend to not have enough inertia through a swing,  The 30" barrels make up for that on this gun.  In one email regarding the gun Steve wrote: 

You will rarely see any 28 as slim and elegant as this 20 -- if you are not used to good English shotguns its lines will amaze you, and the smallness of the action.  I wanted it the moment I saw it, and all romantic analogies apply!  Good Brit 20's compare in looks with US 28's and 410's and pattern better.

It really is a light gun, I believe Nate's scale read 5 lbs 2 oz.  He went over the gun carefully and declared it sound.  The gun shows more wear on the outside than it does inside with the locks in near new condition and it's had some work done on it to try to mitigate that difference.  It was reproofed in London in 2002 and, based on barrel wall thickness measurements, it is still in proof. The right choke is a "bell" or "trumpet" choke (-.005") and the left barrel is what Nate called a tight quarter choke at (.009") - others would call it Improved Cylinder.  We patterned the gun and it shoots to point of aim.  I thought the gun balanced perfectly - Nate says it could loose 2 ounces from the butt end and be better balanced.  To prove it to me he taped 2 ounces to the barrels about 14 inches north of the triggers.  I have to admit that there was a subtle but noticeable difference.  This is one of those ineffable things.  You can't specify the point on the gun (say 4" in front of the trigger guard) where it should balance, it should feel balanced when you naturally hold it in your hands.

A twenty  chambered for 2 1/2" shells is essentially the British equivalent of a modern twenty-eight. The standard load in a 2 1/2" twenty gauge shell is 7/8 oz of shot while modern 28 gauge shells carry 3/4 ounce - an eighth of an ounce less.   So a light weight 2 1/2" twenty is a lot like a twenty-eight carrying 16% more shot.  You can find 7/8 ounce loads for the twenty-eight (Fiocchi makes them) and you can find 2 1/2" 20 GA shells loaded with a hair less than an ounce of shot (Gamebore makes them).   In fact, I was able to buy a few boxes of these at Jax in Fort Collins so I do have some shells - if not grouse loads.  These heavy loads are pushing the limits. The standard loads for my gun are made by RST and they sell them by the flat (250 shells per) reasonably priced and in every possible configuration you might like.

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In the end I'd say this was a perfectly constructed trade.  Thank you Steve!  He'll get what he wants and I'm very happy with what I got - even if it may have seemed to Steve at some point that I was dragging my feet.  I took the gun out chasing Blue grouse for a few hours yesterday and although we did not flush even one bird (unlike the day before) I did get to spent a few hours in the field with the new gun and am even happier with it than I was before.  I'm hoping it will turn out to be a magic grouse wand.

Shotgun Notes

From James Howe's (of Griffin and Howe) book "The Modern Gunsmith"

The first gun I ever bought was a Browning Citori Superlight. It's a light weight 20 gauge over/under shotgun with a straight grip and 26" barrels. I just installed a recoil pad on it. Previously it carried a plastic butt plate with the Browning name on it. I've installed butt pads before but always on stocks I was already planning to refinish. There is something nerve wracking about putting the stock of a perfectly good shotgun on the chop saw. The butt of the stock was slightly curved for the black plastic plate that was on it before so I needed to straighten it for the flat back of this pad.

The pad I put on it is an imitation of the classic British Silvers pad sold by the Connecticut Shotgun Manufacturing Company called the "correct period pad". High end British shotguns and rifles sported orange rubber pads made my a company called Silvers, having one gives a shotgun a rather classic look. They were also used as the base for leather wrapped pads which were often done in goatskin.

Since you do not aim a shotgun but instead point it, the stock measurements determine where the gun points when it's mounted. The image above is from volume I of James V. Howe's encyclopedic The Modern Gunsmith first published in 1934. The 1930's may well be the pinnacle of gunsmithing art. Very little has really happened since then in the gun world; off the top of my head I can't think of a thing. Drop at comb, drop at heel, length of pull, pitch and cast (on or off) are the measurements that determine where it will point when mounted. These measurements are shown in the accompanying illustration.

I increased the length of pull on the shotgun by 1/2" to 14 1/2" to have it match another that I own. I kept the original pitch; pitch is the angle of the finished butt to the top of the barrels. At 1" thickness for the pad and another 1/8" for the black spacer the Galazan pad seemed a bit too thick for the lightweight shotgun I was putting it on. I screwed it to a board and ran it across the table saw to slice the orange part down to a bit less than 1/2". I glued it back up with contact cement and shaped it. I rough shaped it with the disc/belt sander that Gerry gave me for my birthday and then did most of the final shaping with sandpaper wrapped around a file. Slow work, but far safer for the stock. The photo below makes the pad appear to be a slightly brighter orange than it seems in person, but just a bit. Out of the box the Galazan pad is a bit of chalky reddish color and although they claim the pad its color is an exact replica, it does not seem as orange as ones I've seen. I dabbed some thinned down cadmium orange oil paint on it to orange it up a bit and then, as per instructions from Galazan, shellacked it. First time I put it on my shellac was too thick and sort of gummed up and I had to clean it off and then try again with it significantly thinned down with alcohol.



The new pad personalizes the shotgun in a way that I'm very pleased with. I hope to get out after some birds with it soon, some pheasants in eastern Wyoming after Thanksgiving. Grouse locally here at home and I hope to hunt chukar in eastern Oregon on our drive west in mid-December. Bird season around here end December 31st.

Shotgun loads

Looking at various shotgun pages I see that the Fiocchi Golden Pheasant load with one ounce of sixes or fives are top rated for chukar and pheasant. Everyone raves about them. The 20 gauge 2 3/4" shells carry 1 oz. of nickle coated lead shot and so are not legal for ducks or on Wyoming state game farm lands. Oregon still allows lead shot for upland game birds as does Wyoming on non-game farm lands. Non-tox shot prices are astronomical. My Citori is an old one with fixed chokes and steel shot is not recommended for older guns. Steel is the inexpensive approved shot for waterfowl hunting. I was surprised to learn that the Bismuth Cartridge Company went out of business a couple of years ago and there was a gap in availability of bismuth shot. For a time, bismuth was the only lead free shot option for classic shotguns. It is a bit denser than steel shot (but softer) and so is more effective than steel. It is more expensive. If you want to shoot ducks with an older shotgun for a time it was the only option. Now a new company called Bis-Maxx is selling bismuth shotgun shells. The kicker is that they cost just a bit less than three dollars a shell. Kent Tungsten Matrix shot is also approved as non-toxic shot for waterfowl and is safe for older barrels. It is even heavier than lead and so has even better ballistics than old fashioned lead shot. A single 2 3/4" shell loaded with 1oz of #6 shot costs three dollars and a quarter. Based on these numbers, I thought, OK, I should start reloading my own shotgun shells. It turns out that Tungsten Matrix shot can not be purchased and bismuth shot runs about $24/pound. With 16 oz per pound that makes the shot cost alone around $1.50 per 20 ga. shell; and you still need primers, hulls, powder, wads and a MEC reloading press. I just ordered eight boxes of the Fiochii shells in sixes and fives which come out to cost about sixty cents a piece. The sad thing is that I have frequently jumped ducks when hunting pheasant or grouse and you can not legally shoot one if you are carrying any lead shot shells on your person.