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February 4, 2012
The Friendly Little 28
We spent a lot of time talking about grouse hunting and grouse dogs, and I asked him about his father’s preference for the 28-gauge as a grouse gun, especially since in the 1940s the available standard loads were only 5/8 ounce of shot, below the standard 3/4-ounce loads today. Bill told me that there had been a little gift his dad had been given by the game of skeet, which he and some friends invented to practice for grouse shooting. They called it “shooting around the clock,” and in its infancy, it had only one trap where the high house would be today, and the shooters shot from stations positioned in a circle in front of it with the trap being at 12 o’clock. Then a neighbor, I think it was a pig farmer or chicken farmer (if anyone knows which please tell me), complained about stray shot, so they added the other trap at 6 o’clock and shot in a semi-circle, like today. That gift, picked up after the game was renamed “skeet” and became a competitive shooting event, was a flinch. |
Gun Room
ot too long ago (November/December 2006), I told you, in the context of an article about what you and I would do if we ran the gun companies, I mentioned William Harnden Foster Sr. and Jr. and that years ago, I had the pleasure of spending some time and getting to know Bill, Jr. His dad, Bill, Sr., was a magazine editor, field trial judge, and perhaps best known today as the talented author and illustrator of the classic book New England Grouse Shooting. 