Game & Gun Gazette
Gearing Up for the Game Fair
It’s 51 years young and still has the energy to excite fieldsports enthusiasts young and old. I am, of course, talking about the annual Country Land and Business Association (CLA) Game Fair, scheduled this year for July 24 to 26 at Belvoir (pronounced “Beaver”) Castle, in eastern England.
Held every year since 1948—with the notable exception of 2007 when, to everyone’s surprise, flooding stopped play—the Game Fair, as it is known to most British sportsmen, is the biggest event of its kind in the world.
Over three days, thousands of fieldsports enthusiasts (150,000 last year, to be precise) descend on a rather smart country estate for a variety of outdoor pursuits, shopping and drooling over some of the most beautiful examples of the gunmaker’s art.
The fair’s director, David Hough, is upbeat about this year’s gathering. “Like everyone else, we were concerned about the recession when we sent out the trade booking forms in December,” Hough said, “but to our surprise they started to come back quickly and we’ve already got a great lineup at the show.”
And a great lineup it is, with nearly 200 exhibitors in Gunmaker’s Row, including James Purdey & Sons; Holland & Holland; William & Son; Atkin, Grant & Lang; Dickson & MacNaughton; Lebeau-Courally; William Evans and Elderkin & Son. Guerini USA also will be exhibiting for the first time.
But shooting is only part of the story, as visitors also can enjoy Fisherman’s Row, Gamekeeper’s Row and a host of other areas selling everything from fine art to rare books, the heaviest tweed for the hill, vehicles, garden furniture and every accessory for the sporting life in between.
If you are new to the Game Fair but used to the plush environs of events such as the SCI Convention, heed this warning: This is an outdoor event and is as exposed to the vagaries of the weather as anything else held outdoors in England during the summer. Dress for sun and rain—and I mean both. The Game Fair also is held on pastureland, so good walking shoes are essential.
Although this is not a scientific pronouncement by any means, the general consensus is that Friday, the first day, is the best. Everyone is excited to be there, and the exhibits haven’t been mauled by thousands of eager visitors. You also need to get there in good time if you’re looking for that used English gun you’ve always promised yourself. Things move fast, and bargains go early.
Although I can’t promise glorious sunshine or that you’ll find your dream gun, I do know you’ll have a great time and come away with plenty of new friends and your arms full of goodies.
I’ve missed only a couple of fairs since 1981, and every year I tell myself I will be sober with the credit card; after all, how many Owen Williams paintings can one man own in a lifetime? A lot, it turns out, and I always fail to keep my wallet closed. (The year I don’t buy anything likely will be the year I hang up my guns.)
If you like the idea of attending the event, contact The CLA Game Fair, 01144-207-462-1570; www.gamefair.co.uk. The show office can help with tickets, travel arrangements, hotel rooms, and even theater visits and a day’s simulated shooting, if you wish. In addition, overseas visitors are eligible to receive complimentary guest badges to the CLA’s Members Enclosure, which offers a variety of entertainment and restaurants.
To paraphrase Samuel Johnson speaking about his beloved London, “He who tires of the Game Fair tires of life itself.” Enjoy. —John Gregson
Purdey’s New All-Damascus Gun
For many, owning a gun by James Purdey & Sons is like owning a Rolls-Royce: One is not taking delivery of a tool for killing birds as much as one is achieving an ambition—adding one’s name to a list of illustrious individuals who have contributed to and shaped human destiny. Among the styles of guns available are side-by-sides, over/unders, an Italian-made sporting clays model, a retro hammergun, and now a gun with metal parts made entirely of Damascus steel.
“Perhaps the most exciting new product since I joined Purdey,” gushed Nigel Beaumont, chairman of the firm. In a press release titled “Purdey’s Secret Weapon” the company referred to its latest creation as “the world’s first 100% Damascus steel gun.”
Purdey’s best-known model is the classic Beesley-actioned side-by-side. Dating from the 1880s, the early guns featured Damascus barrels, in which laminations of folded iron and steel were hot-forged around a mandrel and then polished to reveal swirls and patterns. These barrels were known not only for their wonderful cosmetic qualities but also for having great flexibility. They eventually were replaced by fluid steel. Now things have come full circle and the Beesley/Purdey (along with other models) can be had in Damascus—only this time the gun is being built almost entirely in Damascus steel. That’s right, not only the barrels but also the action, trigger, trigger guard, forend iron and so on.
The new guns are being created from a unique blend of EN19/EN21 Damascus sourced from Swedish steel-maker Damasteel AB (www .damasteel.se), of Söderfors, which also supplies Purdey with Damascus for the company’s hunting knives. “The Damascus-gun steel is supplied to Purdey as 55mm bar before being specially forged in Sheffield [UK] to provide the basic action bodies and full-length chopper-lump barrels as well as all the smaller steel parts,” Beaumont said. “These are then machined by Purdey in Hammersmith before passing to the craftsmen’s benches for the normal bespoke gunmaking progression through the barrelmaking, action-filing, lock- and trigger-making, ejector-making, stocking and finishing shops.
“With regard to twisting the barrels, it was done on a machine located in France. I do not know if it is the only one of its kind, but suffice to say that it is a very sophisticated machine—CNC controlled and very modern. Not easy to find, either! To get the correct look, Damascus tubes have to have twist in them, and of course the two barrels have the twist going in opposite directions. The top rib and side ribs are of the same material also. All parts other than springs, tumblers, seers, cams and non-visible screws and pins are fabricated from Damascus steel. Each visible part of the gun—action, forend iron, triggerplate, bow and guard, rib, fins, etc.—were cut from re-forged billets so as to procure the best display of the pattern available in the steel. This re-forging is particular to us also. We can case harden the steel also. The guns will carry no engraving other than the Purdey name. The Damascus pattern will of course be individual to each gun.”
According to Beaumont, the guns will be nitro-proofed and in all respects conform to modern standards. Which then begs the question: So why Damascus? “Why not?” Beaumont said. “There has always been an affinity in the modern era for Damascus steel, and many people have harbored ambitions to make the tubes again. We have made it a reality. Of course there is great attraction in having the very evident beauty of the steel manifest itself whenever the owner looks at or uses the gun; after all, why not have that which is beautiful, unusual and rare in a functional gun?
“If there is sufficient interest, we will produce a limited number of guns as 20-gauge over/unders, 12- and 20-gauge side-by-sides, and 20-gauge hammerguns. We have yet to finalize a price; however, given the rarity of the guns and the fact that Damascus steel costs 13 times as much as our normal gun steels, they will be at a premium. We are confident that, given their unique provenance, they will in time become highly prized—and valued—collectors’ items.”
For more information, contact James Purdey & Sons, 01144-20-7499-1801; www.purdey.com. —Douglas Tate
L.L. Bean Adds New Doubles at Flagship Store
When I was a kid, we stopped at the original L.L. Bean store in Freeport, Maine, every few trips north to my father’s native state. The details of those visits are lost to me now, except that I remember wide, pine floorboards that creaked underfoot and that the store reminded me of an old-fashioned hardware store that went on forever.
Bean’s now has more than a dozen retail locations in the Northeast and into the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, but the company’s flagship store—updated and expanded many times since my childhood—is still open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The company’s hunting and fishing heritage seems almost incongruous now amid the upscale retail environment its traditional appeal helped build, so it’s been heartening to see the family-owned business sustain its commitment to the less-fashionable “blood sports” by not only doubling the size of its dedicated Hunting & Fishing Store but also adding a nice pair of Bean-branded double guns to the racks of the firearms department there. The expansion of the Hunting & Fishing Store also has allowed the addition of a full-service pro shop, which offers firearms servicing and cleaning by a knowledgeable staff.
Gun sales are still a mainstay of the almost-100-year-old outfitter. “We’re doing a terrific business buying and selling used guns,” said company spokesman Mac McKeever. “At the same time we’ve expanded our offerings of new guns.” McKeever noted that Bean’s has long offered double guns tailored to company specifications.
Regarding the new doubles, Bean’s product developers and Bill Gorman, great-grandson of the original L.L. Bean and host of the television show “L.L. Bean Guide to the Outdoors,” worked with the gunmakers at Caesar Guerini to develop the New Englander over/under and those at AyA to introduce the Double L side-by-side. In each case the guns offer upgraded wood, denser checkering, longer stocks and gold triggers as a starting point for modifications.
In addition to the proven robust build of all Guerini guns, the New Englander offers extensive scroll engraving, with gold inlaid “L.L. Bean” on the right side of the boxlock receiver and “New Englander” underneath. The guns feature a hand-rubbed oil finish, hand-cut checkering at 22 lines per inch and a Prince of Wales grip. They come in 12, 20 and 28 gauge as well as .410 with 28" barrels and five standard choke tubes.
The Double L is a nicely dressed version of AyA’s classic boxlock ejectors with features that include disk-set strikers, chopper-lump barrels, double triggers and removable/replaceable trunions. The Double L features light scroll engraving and gold inlaid “L.L. Bean” on the right side of the receiver and “Double L” on the underside. The straight-grip stock is hand-checkered at 24 lpi and has a hand-rubbed-oil finish. Similar to the New Englander, the Double L will be available in 12, 20 and 28 gauge as well as .410 and with 28" barrels, but chokes will be fixed Improved Cylinder and Modified.
The price for the New Englander O/U is $2,850, and the Double L side-by-side will cost $3,595. Both are available at the Hunting & Fishing Store in Freeport or by calling L.L. Bean’s hunting hotline at 800-785-8268. —Ed Carroll
SSM Readers & Writers Adventures
A few openings remain for willing and eager Guns to participate in one of this season’s Shooting Sportsman Readers & Writers Adventures. The fortunate few who can travel with us will join Contributing Editor Bruce Buck in locales that exemplify the best shooting available for a particular quarry, area and style. Following is a synopsis of where we’re heading this year. (For complete details, refer to “New Readers & Writers Adventures,” March/April, or visit the “Shoots & Tours” section of our Website: www.shootingsportsman.com.)
We’ll start with a classic four-day, high-volume dove shoot with SYC Adventures at Estancia El Cortijo, in Cordoba Province, Argentina. Our party will gather at the Cordoba airport on the morning of August 19 for the shuttle ride to the estancia, where we’ll arrive in time for an afternoon in the dove fields. Following will be three full days of hot-barreled action, good food and drink, good company, and the scented airs of Argentina . . . .
Our second trip will be with the Lindskov family and the staff at Firesteel Creek Lodge, who offer a superlative South Dakota wild-bird hunt. We will partake from October 25 to 29. Started in 1934, the Lindskov Ranch is one of the largest family-owned hunting operations in South Dakota. Sound ranching and farming practices on vast grasslands and grainfields have made for spectacular wildlife management. Sharp-tailed grouse, Hungarian partridge and ringneck pheasants abound.
And third, we’ll partake of the traditional Georgia quail-hunting experience with Bill Bowles at Quail Country Plantation from January 6 to 10, 2010. Quail Country provides great shooting over top-notch dogs in extensively managed longleaf-pine habitat. It also offers Southern hospitality, a beautiful 14,000-square-foot lodge and sumptuous Southern cooking. A classic hunt for sure.
For more information on our Readers & Writers Adventures, call Terry Bombeke at 207-594-9544 or visit www.shooting sportsman.com.
An Interesting Exchange Too Long for Letters
The following correspondence regarding two articles that appeared in our March/April issue were too lengthy for the Letters column but, we felt, too interesting (and, frankly, too juicy) to abbreviate. —The Editors
For many years following my retirement from Holland & Holland, I have not reacted to articles in various gun and hunting magazines, although I might have had disagreements with the contents. I have decided that 2009 brings change in many positive ways, and I can also now speak my mind. Unfortunately, the first victim of my opinions is a good friend. Douglas Tate, who I have known for many years and consider a knowledgeable friend, has fallen, in my opinion, for that horrible writer’s mistake: an unwillingness to upset those who provide copy and advertising.
Doug writes about the Holt’s December auction (“Clapton Guns Auctioned,” Game & Gun Gazette) in glowing terms. This is doing the general public a disservice; the auction was down considerably and many lots did not sell, including most of Eric Clapton’s collection. Prices realized, such as £100,000 for an unfired pair of Holland & Holland Royal Over & Unders, were certainly not impressive, to put it mildly. It cost more to make them. The good news is that prices at auction will now come back to realistic levels and that bit players will leave the field and real experts, such as Holt’s, will be doing most of the gun auction business. As buying at auction is always a bit of a gamble, especially for the non-initiated, this is good news indeed.
Then the article on Frederick Beesley (“Frederick Beesley: A Patent Success”). An excellent second-tier gunmaker in his day, with a fertile mind. He sold his action design to Purdey’s, I believe, because he needed money. To call this the best design for a self-opening action, however, is, to say the least, ludicrous. Purdey’s, probably for marketing reasons, has chosen to stay with this design throughout the years, notwithstanding the fact that it has been superseded by far-superior designs since. Technically, cocking a gun on closing rather than opening does not make sense. For smaller bores such as 28 and .410 and with double rifles, the extra power required to close the guns is actually very irritating and sometimes a major handicap. The best thing said about the action is probably the legend that Purdey’s staff told potential customers that this hard closing posed no problems, as “their customers never did close their own guns.”
Douglas makes it worse by stating the action has been copied by gunmakers from Russia to Spain and then mentions some select English makers as well. In Russia one gun was made in Tulla called the Russian Purdey, which was made as a direct copy, but it did not succeed and was a terrible clonker. I have never seen a Spanish gun with a Purdey action. In England the only ones who have copied the Purdey action are ex-craftsmen from Purdey’s, as that is what they learned to make. In Spain Arrizabalaga, Garbi, Grulla, AyA, Ugartechea, Sarasqueta, etc. have always made copies of the Holland & Holland action and sidelock, as have the gunmakers from Belgium, such as LeBeau, Thonon, Thys, FN, Bury, etc.; and Italy, such as Bertuzzi, Fausti, etc.—and so we can go on around the gunmaking world for their side-by-sides. Even very recently Tony Galazan chose to incorporate the simple and straightforward H&H assisted-opening system in the RBL guns as an option.
Come on, Doug, copy may be hard to come by, but the Beesley action became outmoded in the late 19th Century, and I know you well enough that you must agree with that statement. You may rightfully consider me somewhat biased, but then explain why top gunmakers such as F.lli Rizzini and Lebeau-Courally do not build on the Purdey action.
Jan Roosenburg
Via e-mail
Holt’s Auctioneers responds:
I was amazed to receive your e-mail re the Eric Clapton collection. We don’t know who Mr. Roosenburg is, and we certainly refute his false accusation about the sale of the EC collection. We sold the entire collection for a total hammer price of £443,000 (plus 20-percent buyers’ premium) on the day of the sale to an assortment of individual and trade purchasers. They were genuine sales at auction and none were bought in, and I would like to know on what evidence Mr. Roosenburg bases his wild and wholly inaccurate accusations.
Perhaps you would like to pass this information on to Mr. Roosenburg and request a written retraction of his accusations together with an apology.
For your information, our sales “back office” system automatically generates the realized sale prices and uploads them to the online catalogue. We cannot input inaccurate sales data, because the system just does not allow it. The online catalogue and our Website sit on separate and unrelated servers with links between them from selected pages; the online catalogue server is maintained by the company that provides our back-office system. They do this for hundreds of other auctioneers so are pretty tight on preventing potential misrepresentation.
Andrew J. Orr
Media Manager
Holt’s Auctioneers
James Purdey & Sons responds:
We have received your e-mail together with the one from Jan Roosenburg about the Purdey/Beesley assisted-opening action. We have given a lot of thought to Jan’s remarks and opinions, which of course he is perfectly entitled to make, but, as you would expect, we disagree with several of his points and therefore would comment as follows:
The merits of the Beesley/Purdey assisted-opening action have long been the subject of debate within Purdey’s. Gunmakers back in the 19th Century were highly competitive with each other and were always trying to find new ideas and patentable USPs [unique selling propositions] for their products, including a means of making their guns work faster, because among the richer clientele of those times the ability to shoot enormous bags was important to their reputation—and the faster they could shoot, the more birds they would bring down and the more guns would be sold.
Beesley was an ambitious Purdey actioner who was dismissed by James Purdey for spending too much time in the pub! He sold his patented design for an assisted-opening action to James Purdey after this episode and went on to set up his own well-respected business.
The H&H mechanism was also designed by an outsider and is a version of the Rogers Cocking patent of 1881, in which the mechanism is cocked on opening by a seesaw lever. At that time many makers of sidelock guns used versions of this design.
The Beesley/Purdey mechanism uses the mainsprings to help open the gun and also to power the tumblers. Cocking on closing actually makes perfect sense. The Beesley/Purdey mechanism does have to be made to exacting standards and would not be cost effective for most makers. If the Purdey action could have been made at a lower cost, it almost certainly would have been more widely used.
One of the advantages of the Purdey self-opener is that it is a very well proven design, having been in continuous production since 1880 and at a rough estimate built into about 15,000 guns. As with all Purdey gun components, it has been subject to a policy of continual improvement, and it seems to have satisfied a large number of customers, very few of whom have ever requested Rogers cocking actions in place of the Beesley. It is certainly more complex than other designs, which is why it is expensive to make and why other gunmakers prefer to use cheaper alternatives yet say theirs are better. They would, wouldn’t they, but the Beesley action has stood the test of time. It works very well indeed and very reliably, and it is robust.
Even without the help of the apocryphal loader, you can shoot a Purdey very fast if you put your mind to it, and suffer no strain at all if you get the hang of setting your hands just a little farther apart to provide greater leverage. We all use Purdeys to shoot and have never found them hard work or to cause RSIs (repetitive strain injuries).
Another advantage of the Purdey design is that because there is some resistance when closing the gun, owners (and loaders) are less inclined to slam the gun shut and crack or break stocks, which can happen all too easily with a Rogers cocking action. The Beesley/Purdey, in a way, is its own shock absorber.
There is then the matter of Rogers cocking guns sometimes being hard to open—rather than the Purdey being hard to close. That is because there has to be a distribution of energy over the cycle of firing, reloading and cocking, and the resistance in this cycle will be affected by the quality of manufacture of the mechanism and of regulation, such as getting all the angles of the cocking rods, cams and levers absolutely right. A Purdey distributes this “load” more evenly, and this is a vital aspect of the regulation of the gun. The endurance of the Beesley/Purdey design is due in no small measure to this regulating aspect and the precision of its manufacture.
Within the world of guns and shooting there are bound to be fans as well as critics of the Purdey/Beesley self-opener. Taken by and large, those who shoot with Purdey’s swear by their guns, and customers continue to want the action in new guns. As the makers, we at Purdey’s believe that amongst all the different ways of assisting the opening of a gun, the Beesley/Purdey mechanism continues to be the best for performance and for reliability, if not for simplicity or low cost.
We hope that the foregoing will be helpful. Please let us know if you have any queries or require further information.
Nigel Beaumont, Chairman
Peter Blaine, Gun Sales Manager
Richard Purdey, Chairman (ret.)
