Game & Gun Gazette

Vintage Cup 2008

The Vintage Cup will return to Pintail Point, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, September 25 to 28—with several improvements planned for this second year in one of the country’s most storied gunning areas. Foremost among double-gun events in the US, this will be the 12th Annual Vintage Cup World Side-by-Side Championships, Double Rifle Championships and Exhibition, and Vintagers President Ray Poudrier promises that all will be bigger and better than ever.
Less than an hour from Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Pintail Point offers beautiful shooting grounds as part of the larger River Plantation, on the Wye River. Last year, the first at Pintail Point, attendees enjoyed easy access to a wide range of hotel accommodations and dining.
Among the improvements Poudrier said are in the works for this year:
• More grass has been left in the cornfield, where last year vehicle traffic and parking adjacent to the exhibition area led to airborne dust inside the tents. Water trucks also will aid in dust control.
• The range facility for stopping rifles has been moved and reworked for greater safety.
• Changes have been made to ensure a better banquet on the grounds Saturday night.
• Incentives have been added for better Sunday attendance, including half-price admittance in the morning and free admittance after noon, plus an official break-down time for vendors of 3 pm.
Shooters in Sunday’s World Side by Side Championship will see new targets appropriate for the Vintagers’ casually competitive approach to sporting clays. All of the usual side competitions will return, including those specific to sub-gauges, hammerguns and blackpowder guns. This year, however, shooting in sub-gauge competitions also will be allowed on the opening day, Thursday.
Sponsors include Shooting Sportsman, The Classic Upland Supply Co., SYC Sporting Adventures, Hlathini Safaris, RST Classic Shotshell Co., B&P USA, True-Life Taxidermy, and Bruce & Joan Samuels.
As a founding sponsor, SSM has never missed the event, and we will be offering $20 subscription specials to help mark our 20th anniversary. B&P USA will sponsor the 28-gauge event and will provide each of that competition’s entrants with two boxes of 28-gauge shells. As they did last year, Hlathini Safaris and True-Life Taxidermy will award an African Cape buffalo hunt and appropriate taxidermy, with a drawing from among all rifle competition entrants.
Rifle shooters may attend in greater numbers this year to compete with the so-called Australian Rifle Team, a double-rifle club from Down Under that a few years ago cleaned up in the competition at Sandanona. Rifle events include those for stopping and stalking double rifles, single-shots, Drillings and Cape guns.
For more information on the Vintage Cup, contact Ray Poudrier, 413-339-5347; www.vintagers.org.

A Gathering of Clans
The Vintage Cup long has been a draw for collectors’ groups, and that attraction is growing. For collectors joined by their affinity and fascination for particular double-gun makers or countries of origin, this gathering is an ideal way to shoot and socialize with fellow members and share in the guns that bind them. It is also a way to exhibit fine or historic selections of guns and ephemera to the broader double-gun community.
The German Gun Collectors Assoc. is unique in many ways, but particularly because it is oriented around a country of origin rather than a specific maker. Every year at the Vintage Cup the GGCA offers up a wonderful exhibit of German guns and an exuberant gathering of members. To learn more and to see the organization’s excellent newsletter, Der Waffenschmied, visit www.germanguns.com.
The Parker Gun Collectors Assoc. is among the largest and most active affinity groups and will hold its annual meeting in conjunction with the Vintage Cup again this year. For members, including those who join at the Cup, this means the annual PGCA banquet, raffle and silent-auction fundraiser Saturday night. Raffle prizes include a Turnbull-restored 20-gauge Parker GH and a leather gun case featuring the group’s logo from J.W. Hulme.
The PGCA also will have a headquarters tent on the exhibition grounds as it did last year. Here members will have club information and their newsletter, Parker Pages, as well as guns for display and for sale. For more information, visit www.parkergun.org.
The L.C. Smith Collectors Assoc. has gathered and exhibited at the Vintage Cup several times and will again this year. “The Gun That Speaks for Itself” has some able spokesmen among the LCSCA faithful, who consistently shoot well and show some stunning high-grade examples. For more information, visit www.lcsmith.org.
Two years ago the initial conversations that launched the A.H. Fox Gun Collectors Assoc. took place at the Vintage Cup in Sandanona, so for those who fancy “The Finest Gun in the World,” this year’s exhibit at the Vintage Cup is a sort of homecoming. The group’s leading organizer, Craig Larter, started with a Web-based gathering place, and the group congealed around www.foxcollectors.com. Now nearly 100 strong, members will offer Fox shooters the chance to join in a side competition for the Ansley H. Fox Championship, to be shot concurrent with the American Classics course. See the Fox Website for more information.

—Ed Carroll

Boss Closes Mount Street Shop

The fine-gun world was shocked earlier this year when gunmaker Boss & Co. announced the closure of its London store. The retail premises on Mount Street in Mayfair closed mid-May, ending a long period of central-London representation. But sources at the firm say a return to the prestigious West End will come soon.
William Boss began his gunmaking apprenticeship in Birmingham in 1773, later moving to London to work for Joseph Manton, the father of the modern sporting gun. Boss’s son, Thomas, also went on to apprentice under Manton, completing his own apprenticeship in 1812.
Thomas set up his own business in 1839 at 73 St. James’s Street, in the heart of London’s “club land,” where prestigious gentlemen’s clubs such as White’s and Boodle’s attracted a wealthy clientele. From the outset, Thomas produced only “best”-quality guns, and his company became known as “builders of best guns only.”
John Robertson took over the business in 1891, and he developed the famous Boss single trigger in 1894, the Boss ejector in 1898, and the company’s signature sidelock over/under sporting gun in 1909.
The prestige of Boss guns is echoed in a famous quote from King George VI who, when asked if he had ever considered buying a Boss, said: “A Boss gun, a Boss gun, bloody beautiful but too bloody expensive.”
Boss moved to Dover Street in 1908 and then Albermarle Street in 1930, and then the company returned to shabby-but-legendary 13 Dover Street in 1982. I visited Boss at Dover Street on a number of occasions and discovered a Dickensian shop with few guns on the racks and craftsmen working in the basement. Running the firm then was Tim Robertson, the last of the family at the helm and something of a “character” in his own right.
In 2000 the firm moved to very posh premises at 16 Mount Street, a stone’s throw from J. Purdey & Sons and adjacent to William & Son. In 2004 a factory was opened near Kew Bridge in Richmond, Surrey, where the company builds 20 guns each year.
The recent financial boom and Mount Street’s rising reputation as the new Bond Street have led to rising rents in the Mount Street area. Boss accepted an “offer it couldn’t refuse” from a famous fashion house keen to buy the company’s remaining lease on the premises.
“The building is owned by Grosvenor Estates, and we had a 15-year lease, with a rent review every five years,” said Roy Lyu, Boss & Co’s gunroom manager. “Like all commercial rents, it only went in one direction—up. A prestigious fashion house wanted in, and as the area was filling with top-end couture, we decided to accept their very generous offer.”
Boss is now selling guns out of its factory. According to Roy, “We have moved the gun retailing side to the Kew factory, and we are selling used and new guns—both Bosses and Robertsons—out of the premises. The only difference is that visitors are by appointment at the moment.”
Roy insists that Boss will have a more traditional retail presence in the near future and will be moving west again. “We will be back in a West End retail shop within the next year,” he said. “Perhaps not in time for the 2008-2009 season, but soon after.”
Roy also hinted at an exciting development coming down the pipeline: The company will introduce a high-quality machine-made, Robertson-branded version of its achingly beautiful Boss over/under. There will be two major differences. As with the Robertson side-by-side introduced last year, the Robertson O/U will be a sideplated boxlock instead of a sidelock, and the price will be significantly less than a Boss best, at £10,000 to £12,000 instead of £75,000.
The less-expensive Robertson side-by-side guns are available in the US from Cabela’s for $17,000.
For more information or to arrange a visit to the factory, contact Boss & Co., 01144-207-493-1127; www.bossguns.co.uk. —John Gregson

Give Unto Caesar

London’s William Evans owes its success to Birmingham. During the golden years of the 1920s and ’30s, when Evans’ sold up to 200 guns a year from its posh London premises, many of the guns were Birmingham-built Webley & Scott boxlocks. These days London still may be the focus of “best” gun building, but the Val Trompia, in northern Italy, is unquestionably the new Birmingham. Where once the West End’s gun buyers valued craft and apprenticeships, they now are enamored of the reliability of aerospace technology. And who would deny Italian styling?
None of this has been lost on William Evans, which recently unveiled a mid-priced over/under called the St. James, after Evans’ London address, that is sourced in Italy from Caesar Guerini. With an intended price of less than £10,000, the gun is not inexpensive, but it is less than the competing Italian-made guns from other high-end English names. Based on Guerini’s For-um model, the St. James is a sideplated boxlock featuring a single trigger and interchangeable hinge pins. It weighs 6-1/2 pounds and is initially available in 20 gauge.
“The St. James is a high-quality shotgun that shares many bespoke features with our traditional hand-built English guns,” said Evans Managing Director Duncan Cavenagh. “It will extend William Evans’ appeal to a wider audience and increase our presence in a sector where customers seek the reassurance of dealing with a company that has been in business since 1883. By combining state-of-the-art Italian engineering with traditional finishing skills for which the English gun trade is renowned, we have been able to develop an affordable product that maintains the high quality for which William Evans has become known by sportsmen throughout the world.”
The hand-cut engraving on the St. James was inspired by a pattern from a gun built for the Duke of Connaught in 1906. Many years ago I had the opportunity to handle the duke’s Evans and thought it one of the finest guns I had ever seen. Ironically, when we looked it up in the Evans records, it had been sourced across the street from a chap named John Robertson, who built “best guns only” under the Boss name, but when it came to finishing and retailing affordable Birmingham boxlocks, he put his own name on them. Perhaps the new William Evans should have been called the Duncan Cavenagh?
For more information, contact William Evans in London at 01144-020-7493-0415; www.williamevans.com or at The Tank House, The National Shooting Centre, Bisley, at 01144-014-8348-6500. —Douglas Tate

Beretta and the Brits

What’s going on over there? First a London cab was seen cruising down Mount Street in Beretta livery, then Harrods in Knightsbridge announced a Beretta concession in the world’s most famous department store, now Italy’s oldest gunmaker is offering a two-shot, semi-auto that breaks open like a fine double.
Admittedly, the Italians’ efforts to woo the Brits haven’t all gone their way. The Public Carriage Office insisted that no gun images appear on the aforementioned Hackney Carriage, but the surprise is that Beretta is allowed to advertise at all. I’m just old enough to recall when London department stores like Harrods and Army & Navy retailed Birmingham boxlocks. As the stores disappeared one by one, all agreed we would never see their likes again.
So why the pendulum swing? One reason is that the city big boys have to spend those unprecedented bonuses on something, and game shooting has become so expensive as to become prestigious. The March issue of Shooting Times reported that The Sportsman Gun Centre, which recently expanded into a new “megastore” in southwest England, sold six Beretta SO6 EELLs during the first 10 weeks of the year at £25,000 a pop.
The country where one once had to eat breakfast three times a day to eat well is now a land of celebrity chefs, all of them touting the culinary and health benefits of game. None of this of course explains why Beretta is offering the UGB25 Xcel in the UK. Cunningly clever, this break-open semi-auto clearly has been designed with safety in mind. It only can be a matter of time before chaps in breeks are carrying a brace of them engraved by Ken Hunt onto the grouse moor! —Douglas Tate

A Gun Book for the Coffee Table

Vermont’s Winston Churchill forever will be known as one of America’s premier engravers, and many would bestow the title “Greatest Living American Gun Engraver” upon him without hesitation. Anything Churchill is professionally involved with is noteworthy in the field of fine firearms, including the new book The Churchill-Eaton Colt .45—about Churchill’s engraving of a Colt single-action revolver, which is, he writes, “A statement of my career, a statement of my life.”
Featured are 160 photographs, many of Churchill-engraved double guns, including at least three Purdeys; a couple of Holland & Hollands; and Fabbri, Browning and Parker projects. There are other engraved firearms and pages of custom knives, numerous gold pendants with gamebird motifs, and examples of Churchill’s bronze sculptures.
There are several series of close-up images showing how the gold inlays were cut out with a jeweler’s saw, the gun’s steel surface was undercut, and the gold was secured in the recess. As these might be of great help to the would-be or advanced engraver, aficionados will find them fascinating.
The chosen revolver might not appeal to some as a fine English double gun would, but in the selection of the subject, I cannot think of an American career engraver reaching the “master” class who has not engraved a Colt single-action; it is simply an American tradition. Revolvers and knives hold special appeal to collectors because they take up little space and they can be lavished with embellishment without appearing gaudy in the way a shotgun or ri-fle would. Revolvers present challenges in unique and difficult areas to engrave and inlay, such as the bulge of this Colt’s recoil shield, which has been embellished with a bugling six-point bull elk.
Author and SSM Book Review Editor Charles Fergus does a fine job with a short biography, tying Churchill to the Vermont hills, grouse coverts, American engraving and artisan work ethic. His portrayal of Churchill’s studio, the light, surroundings and conversation while the engraving took place lends insight to the craftsman’s character and his approach to a remarkable art form.
The book presents a revealing foreword by Hugh M. Eaton III, the patron; an introduction by noted firearms authority R.L. Wilson; and the text of a speech given by Churchill at the dedication of the first American college-degree firearms engraving program.
A delightful book in all, I can think of only two reasons not to own and cherish it: Superficially, it appears to be a thin (82 pages), expensive ($275) and oddly shaped (horizontal format, 7-3/4" x 13-3/4") book about a single handgun, or you didn’t buy one of the 500 numbered, limited-edition copies when they were available. (A tipped-in ruffed grouse engraving plate is signed by the engraver, patron and author.)
For more information, contact GRS Tools, 800-835-3519; www.grstools.com. —Steven Dodd Hughes

Stephen Grant Royal Letters Patent at Auction

In its September 25 sale, Holt’s Auctioneers of London will offer a Royal Letters Patent presented to Stephen Grant, one of Britain’s greatest gunmakers.
The Royal Letters Patent—replete with Queen Victoria’s seal—dates from June 15, 1861, for Patent No. 1538, for a drop-down breechloader with underlever and double-bite rotary bolt. This was granted when the gunmaker was managing partner of Thomas Boss & Co., where he served before setting out in 1867 to establish a business under his own name.
The patent letter and seal come from the estate of the late Don Masters, who rescued much important gunmaking memorabilia during his tenure as a director at Churchill (Gunmakers), Ltd., and later the amalgamated Churchill, Atkin, Grant & Lang. For further discussion on the patent, see Masters’ book Atkin, Grant & Lang (pp. 69 & 70.) For more information about the sale, contact Holt’s Auctioneers, 01144-1485-542-822; www.holtandcompany.co.uk. —Vic Venters

Holloway & Naughton Launches Britannia

Among the cognoscenti, shotgun-brand recognition is a given. When someone says “Purdey,” an image of the classic self-opener springs to mind. Building that level of recognition for a new gun from scratch would involve a great deal of time and money—or both—which is why we see so many new no-name shotguns fail and also why we read so many “phoenix from the ashes” articles detailing the reemergence of old but recognized names.
The reanimation of ghost shotgun brands is nevertheless problematic. Take Holloway & Naughton (see “Holloway & Naughton,” Jan/Feb ’06). If a brand association for H&N registers at all, it is for quality side-by-sides signed more often by the retailer than the maker. But that was before Andrew Harvison acquired the name just over a decade ago. (If Harvison’s name is familiar, it’s because Andrew simultaneously represented Great Britain in trap, skeet and sporting clays throughout the 1970s and ’80s.)
I’d be the first to say that the initial offerings from H&N left something to be desired. But drawing on his experience in competition, coaching and gunfitting and by using the same craftsmen as Peter V. Nelson, no one—and I mean no one—has improved more than Andrew Harvison as a gunmaker. At the most recent SCI Convention, I happened to be standing at the Holloway & Naughton booth behind the world’s greatest connoisseur collector when I heard him tell Harvison that his Boss-style gun was better finished than a Boss.
Now H&N has launched a new sporting clays model that, like the Royal yacht, is named Britannia. A sidelock over/under sporting clays model with a vent rib and full pistol hand, it also is available in a field grade with a three-piece traditional forend, game-scene engraving, and lighter barrels with a solid rib. The basic price in the UK is £48,000, but this will vary with the exchange rate for US buyers, who can order one through Dewing’s Fly & Gun Shop.
I asked Harvison if the Britannia has an edge over the competition. “Weight, balance and handling along with the build quality by my fantastic team of gunmakers are what make the gun so special,” he said. “We can produce almost any variable or choice of specification—a real plus, because we manufacture all of the parts in our own machine shop. Our Premier range of guns is priced at £65,000, and we finish the Britannia range identically. I feel the price-versus-quality equation compared to our competitors will show that we offer better value. Who else offers a best English sidelock for under £50,000?”
Who knows, for future generations this may be the image that stacks up highest when the world thinks over/under. —Douglas Tate

My ‘Moby Rooster’

During a lifetime of wingshooting, I have seen many things. Gamebirds in full breeding plumage in late fall calling earnestly for a mate, quail and pheasants pricked but not killed that rocket upward like moon shots until their fuel runs out, plus all manner of crossbred and exotic game.
Once while out hunting Huns, I saw a white bird in a fleeing covey. I was the guest of a very determined individual who insisted we pursue what he clearly considered a trophy. We spent an entire afternoon chasing that unfortunate covey across the scablands of Eastern Washington. When the partridge eventually was brought to bag, it was not white at all but simply an extremely pale mutation, what biologists call a leucistic bird.
Last winter, just before Christmas, I was hunting with my pal Doc Underhill in wind-blown sleet along the border of Washington and Oregon, when his springers flushed a pheasant that sailed down a brush-choked defile. We hurried to where we thought the rooster had pitched in, and Doc’s dogs immediately became birdie. Imagine our surprise when a white pheasant came boiling out. Doc shot, and I saw the ghost flinch, but the rooster was about to make good his escape when my shot caught him square.
Our first thought was that the pheasant was a fairly common mutation of the ringneck, but his feet and legs were white and, upon opening his eyes, we could see that they, too, were entirely devoid of pigmentation, something Doc assured me was diagnostic of albinism.
I live in an area where bird hunters are as plentiful as the quarry they pursue, so I suppose it is something of a miracle that my “Moby rooster” survived until late December. The upshot is that Doc sent him to our local taxidermist, so his great white tail will be a constant reminder of one of the oddities of bird hunting. —Douglas Tate