Pass Along PDJ
December 2008

Enough?
by Steve Smith

ere’s a question I get very often from A Close Relative by Marriage: How many guns are enough? Despite the fact that gun companies have helped us out with this by supplying all guns with screw-in chokes these days, meaning you can use the same gun for, say early season close-in ruffed grouse and later season, leaves-are-down and shots are longer conditions, my feeling is you still need more than one gun if for no other reason than guns are mechanical objects and mechanical objects sometimes break, and always at the worst times.

If you only do one kind of hunting and you’ve found the right gun for you for that sport, stick with it and maybe buy a backup – two autoloaders for pheasants, for example. But most of us hunt more than one bird, so what’s right for the average hunter?

As much for shotshell availability and load choices as anything else, I’d pick: 20-gauge double, very light, for fragile birds and/or close cover – ruffed grouse, woodcock, quail, mountain grouse, and early season sharptails and Huns. I’d get one just like it in 12-gauge for pheasants and late season prairie birds. And I’d get a gas-operated autoloader in 12-gauge for waterfowl and high-volume shooting for doves, where you’re likely to shoot a lot of shells even if the limits are not that high. If you break something, you can use one gun to pinch-hit for another – if your duck gun breaks, you can hunt with your pheasant gun, for example. Somebody once said “You can’t be too thin or too rich.” I don’t know about that, but I do know you can’t have too many shotguns.

What if you like the “odd-gauge” guns? My old friend the late Gene Hill very much liked, instead of the 20/12 combination, the 28/16. Both of these are great guns, though the shells are harder to find, and when you do find them, likely to be more expensive.

But if you really want these in your arsenal, just get sets of chamber inserts – gauge reducers that will turn your break-action gun into a smaller gauge: Your 20 can, for an afternoon, be a 28, your 12 a 16. These gadgets really work and the patterns I’ve shot have been every bit as good as if they’d been fired from a true-gauge gun. There is evidence that they even speed up the velocity of the load.

So, how many guns are enough? Looks like, logically, only three. But then how much of any of this is logical?

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