The guy on the left in the second photo was dear old dad. Pete and 10 gauge would have gotten along famously with him! They could have talked guns to my dad for hours on end.
If you look very close at the middle photo you will see two drake mallards setup on the sand bar like they are sleeping. I would use dead ducks as confidence decoys for waterfowl. Note the dead crows in the water, I would call them with a hand call when the shooting got slow on the ducks.
The 21 is a nice gun. I do like the SxS just brings me back to the "good old days". in a week we will start shooting our short 10's. I just picked up a Ithaca NID 10 ga.
I think I will start the fall season off with that.
It looks like you were brought up right, hunting and shooting a SxS That is quite a duck blind in one of the pics, looks comfortable. Looking back at the pictures it reminds of those days long gone by. A lot of water has gone over the dam, hard to believe, life goes by quick. Did your Dad ever travel to Kansas with you to shoot crows?
My father only made one trip to Kansas to hunt crows, that was my maiden voyage out here in November of 1968 while on leave from the USN. My father was 60 years old in 1968 but my father did not have the push I had for the crow hunting even though he was the one who got me started.
He had a very nice Purdy O/U 20 gauge that he shot crows with in New York State when I was a kid. He also loved double rifles, he had a .577 and a .600 Nitro Express Holland & Holland that he used on Elephant & Rhino. He would have enjoyed talking to you and your partner about SXS & O/U shotguns.
Pete, I forgot to add that the inside of that blind had two bunks where you could lay down and rest or even sleep there over night. It had a large pot bellied stove in the middle of that blind that we cooked on. I wish I had photos of the inside. We would moor those blinds at different locations in the bays with 350 pound mushroom anchors and 60 feet of chain. I used a 50 pound anchor for the front of those blinds to hold them steady so they wouldn't shift in a wind. At the end of the hunt I always pulled in the 50 pounder and kept it in the blind for the next hunt.
I was doing a mans job at 13 years old tug boating those blinds in to position at the start of every duck season. You had to really watch the chain as it paid out after dropping a 350 pound mushroom anchor over board. If you ever got your legs wrapped up in that chain you were a gonner!
Since you are much further north than I am what are the temperatures like when you start your season?
It's not so long ago that I enjoyed the sound of the breach closing on a well made SXS.
It's not just the high temps, it's the humidity and high dew point in this part of the country that kill you. It's the kind of weather that when you go to take off your t-shirt you rip off the neck band because the rest of it is stuck to you. Some doubles just sound better closing than others, although I don't own one presently an A.H. Fox just sounds great when you close them.
A guy named Gary from Colorado that I met on a dove hunt in Uruguay back in 1998 was using an old pigeon gun. It was from the 1880's with hammers on it with 32 inch barrels. It was an old Purdy and you can hear the sound on video tape of that shotgun when he would close the breach it sounded like a Swiss Watch.
Yup, you could have stayed in it over night if you wanted to. I was always afraid that if the boat ever broke loose during the night I would be stranded out there; no way to make a swim for it. We had many a duck dinner out there while hunting. When the black labs would shake off after a retrieve the inside of the blind looked like a sauna bath with all the steam from the pot bellied stove. We tried to keep them outside the blind until after they shook off but sometimes one would get in the door "before" you got the door closed.
That is quite a duck blind in one of the pics, looks comfortable. Looking back at the pictures it reminds of those days long gone by. A lot of water has gone over the dam, hard to believe, life goes by quick. Did your Dad ever travel to Kansas with you to shoot crows?
