Small is beautiful

Moving seamlessly on from the previous granny post, the above is a photo of me (or parts of me) presenting the coveted .410 trophy at last Sunday's annual competition.

As some of you know, I belong to a club which specialises in owning and shooting shotguns of an historical nature, and some members own and shoot some very old guns indeed. The oldest is not only Elizabethan, but used to belong to a bodyguard of Elizabeth the 1st, and was reputed to have been present at the famous Tilbury Docks speech ('body of weak and feeble woman', etc.) - or so it says on the barrel, but you know what liars these gunsmiths are.

Some years ago, a member brought up his little .410 shotgun, and spent quite a while (and quite a lot of money - .410 cartridges are very expensive) trying to pick off a simple clay with it at the same time as trying to convince us that it could be done. We all laughed at his little pop-gun, and when he finally hit a clay, we put it down to flook rather than skill.

I had a go with it, and to my amazement, eventually hit as well. It is extremely satisfying to break a clay from some distance using something that makes a noise similar to a cork coming out of a bottle, and after that I was hooked. I found a double-barreled, hammer one of about 100 years old and 100 pounds value, then took it up to the shoot to see what it could do.

At that time, there was an unspoken competition about who had the biggest gun (usual story amongst boys of all ages) and a couple 4 bores owned in the club always won, being about the biggest thing you can shoot and still remain standing - albeit about 3 paces back from where you pulled the trigger.

It is interesting to look at the shoulder of the person firing a 4 bore - the bigger (or, let's face it, fatter) they are, the less they move. If you have the gun a couple of inches away from your shoulder when firing it, the effect is similar to someone taking a hefty swing at you with a 2 pound sledge-hammer. The .410, by contrast, has virtually no kick at all, and you could safely fire it whilst pressed against your testicles, though it wouldn't improve your accuracy. (Oh, and in case you should try this, I mean the back end of the gun against your testicles, just to be clear.)

My prime function in the club seems to be to piss people off (rather like my prime function here in Blog-Land), so about 4 years ago, I instigated the .410 Trophy Shoot, bought that little silver cup and mounted it on the base shown in the picture.

Being a highly competitive bunch of old men, I knew that a high proportion of the club would not be able to resist going in for the trophy and sure enough, some went out and bought a .410 for it, the rest borrowing guns for the shoot. Some of the more miserable members refused to take part, probably because they wisely refuse to be publicly ridiculed by their peers.

At the end of each competition, all the losers wander off saying that this will be the last year that they take part in this farce, having run out of excuses for their poor scores during the actual event. The winner, however, returns home with the fabulous solid silver trophy which he displays prominently on the mantle-shelf, instructing his wife to polish it at least once a month. You should see the smile on the faces of the winners as I present it - actually, no you shouldn't, which is why I have cropped the picture.

The .410 is the only British shotgun to use an American system of measurement - it means four tenths of an inch diameter, which is under half an inch (derr). Despite it's size, a .410 has a greater muzzle velocity than a 12 bore, so it's power is often dangerously under-estimated.

There is a gun which is even smaller than a .410, and it is called a 'Garden Gun'. It takes 9 mm brass cartridges which fire a tiny amount of lead dust. It is called a garden gun because it is quiet enough not to wake up your neighbors in a small terraced house, and it's primary function is to shoot at rats and squirrels, etc. It has an effective range of about 20 feet, and the little animals die of impact shock rather than than penetration.

I wonder if I should instigate a Garden Gun trophy?