Shooting

Many years ago, Nash Buckingham wrote an essay titled "Are We Shooting 8-Gauge Guns?" I believe it was published in Gun Digest in 1960. It was a good question and had two answers: no and yes. The question is still valid, and the answers remain the same.
Why bother to ask? Federal law says you can't shoot wildfowl with anything larger than a 10-gauge, and this has been the case since time out of mind. When the Migratory Bird Treaty Act finally became law, in 1918, the 8-bore was proscribed. Actually promulgated in the Department of Interior regulations required by the Act, it was a purely fiat decision, and I believe it came from two directions. In the simplest form, I suspect that whoever drafted the rules asked some hunters he knew what was the largest gun they'd care to shoot at ducks and geese, and most of them said a 10-gauge.
Not surprising. This was the 1910s, and 10-bores were the standard. Eight-bores weren't common in the US. Makers such as Parker and L.C. Smith built a few, but only a few. British makers built many more. If you remember that 11/4 ounces of shot was the standard 10-bore load, then 13/8 ounces was what you got in 8-bore-possibly up to 11/2 ounces, depending upon the cartridge maker.
Remember, too, that the early 20th Century was a time of dwindling wildfowl populations. Habitat was drying up, a phenomenon that would reach its peak in the horrible droughts of the 1930s, when waterfowl all but disappeared from the Mississippi and Central flyways and didn't fare much better farther west.
The 8-gauge, I reckon, was proscribed as a conservation measure, as if anybody shooting one was capable of killing ducks at unheard-of distances. Buy that logic and I'll sell you some nifty swampland in Florida.
I also believe the banishment of the 8-bore was part of a widespread wish to vilify the market hunters. Market hunting was at the time blamed for just about everything since the extinction of dinosaurs. It was completely unregulated and remained largely so for many years beyond the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Passing a law might make some feel warm and fuzzy; enforcing it is a different matter altogether. Fact is, if there hadn't been thriving markets for wild game in most American cities-Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City and many others -market hunting would not have existed. We now might consider their punt guns, battery guns and other armament unethical, but they weren't illegal until 1918, and there was money to be made. We made a similar attempt at high-mindedness during the 1920s, which led to the Golden Age of organized crime. It was called Prohibition.
Actually, I doubt that many serious market hunters used 8-bore guns, but it was a big gun; big guns were associated with market hunting, and thus the 8 gauge got tarred with the same brush.
So Mr. Buckingham's question stands: Are we shooting 8-gauge guns? No, we aren't-but we surely are shooting what used to be 8-gauge loads. We're just doing it through smaller-bore guns, and thus perfectly legally. We have ammunition such as the 3" 10-gauge and the utterly bizarre 3-1/2" 12-gauge. What, I wonder, will it take before Joe Clodpate understands that it's not how much shot you fling but rather owning the ability to put it where the bird is? It's a pity that we can't legislate good shooting, but that, unfortunately, is impossible.
To my mind, the legislation went wrong in attacking the upper end of the spectrum without so much as a glance at the other end. We can't use a gun as efficient as the 8-gauge, but it's quite legal, so far as I know, to shoot at ducks with a .410 if you can find cartridges loaded with nontoxic shot. It's now politically incorrect, to say nothing of illegal, to shoot wildfowl with good old tried-and-true lead, but just fine to wail away with a piss-ant cartridge that should have been the first one declared outside the law. Where is our collective head? Somewhere, I'm afraid, where the sun doesn't shine.
I've made no bones about my undying love of the 28 gauge-but I've never shot a duck with one and never will. I've shot a few ducks with 20s and a few with 16s but only under circumstances where they were appropriate (read: flying right into my lap).
I've also made no bones about my perennial hatred of the .410 as a game gun. It's fun to shoot at skeet and OK for training dogs with pen-reared quail. I've taken a lot of sitting rabbits and squirrels with .410s, but that's as far as I care to go. Shooting at a real gamebird with a .410 represents a level of disrespect that I cannot countenance.
So what's wrong with the .410? Certainly not the guns. They're cute and lightweight and a pleasure to carry. Some are even balanced in a way that a grown man can swing them effectively. A few years ago David McKay Brown showed me his first round-action over/under .410, and it blew me away-a tiny thing stocked to fit a grownup, built with all the meticulous attention that David brings to bear, and engraved by David Hudson in his matchless Celtic-strap style. I could only shake my head and insist to Mr. McKay Brown that if he ever built one just like it in 28 bore that he never let me see it. He has kept his promise, although I know he's built some 28s on the same pattern. I have enough degrees of Covetousness on my list of sins that I don't really need to add any more.
My beef with the .410 is not the gun but rather the cartridge. It's a miserable thing ballistically. The first problem is too little shot-a half-ounce in the standard skeet load and maybe an eighth-ounce more in the mighty 3" version. Either way, the shot column is so long relative to bore diameter that once out the muzzle the pellets are strung from hell to breakfast. This is not so much a problem with a bird going straight away or coming straight in-but with a crosser, even one at a shallow angle, the shotstring has enough holes that you could throw a cat through it and not cause a speck of damage. Shoot skeet targets with a .410 and you'll need to be philosophical about the inexplicable misses. Shoot at gamebirds with one and you should feel something quite different.
By extension, I suppose it would be equally legal to shoot at ducks with a 9mm Rimfire or even a 6mm Rimfire. The guns exist and so do the cartridges, though I suspect you'd have a really hard time finding any loaded with nontoxic shot. Push the notion further and I reckon it's OK to shoot at ducks with .22 Rimfire shotshells. Call that going from the ridiculous to the sublimely absurd.
But we can't shoot ducks with an 8-bore. We can use 8-gauge loads, but not through a barrel that's .835" inside diameter. Something's wrong with this picture.
Try as we might, we cannot legislate morality or ethics, or even good sense. We can enact conservation laws, which we have done and which are enforced as best as possible by a relatively small group of honest, highly dedicated agents. I say, bless 'em. The problem is that enforcement usually comes after the fact. A few years back, a couple of so-called sportsmen flying in from Canada got busted because their private plane was literally stuffed with ducks. They got what they deserved, but the fact remains that all those dead ducks were still dead and thus no longer available to a breeding population. I've shot ducks in Canada and loved it-but no more of them than I would have shot in the US.
I also have shot ducks in Mexico and loved that, too, but again, enough just has to be enough. As best I could tell, game-law enforcement there was haphazard at best and rode on the rails that got the most grease.
The question reverberates far beyond its superficial simplicity. We are bordered on two sides by countries where game-law enforcement ranges from slim to highly negotiable, and yet we take it upon ourselves to conscientiously practice good conservation. Conservation, remember, means "wise use." We impose the concept upon ourselves, both legally and personally, whereas so many others do not. I suppose this isn't the time to explore that matter, so perhaps another time.
And I further suppose I'll be pilloried for some sort of heresy when I suggest that some of our game laws should be rewritten by people who know what the hell they're talking about. Why does federal statute require that all repeating guns used for wildfowl be plugged so they can hold no more than three cartridges? So Ed Schmuck can't kill six or seven ducks out of a single flight? From what I've seen, said Mr. Schmuck is hard-pressed to kill one duck with three shots. It seems just another tacit attack on the market hunters, who often had their repeaters modified with magazines that reached clear to the muzzle.
And why, to come back to where I started, can we not shoot 8-bore guns and yet are free to use a ballistic abortion like the .410? So many questions, so little time.