Book Review

Here are reports on two books about classic shotguns, a collectible-sporting-art reference book and a field guide to fabled creatures from gumberoos to snow wassets.

Parker Guns

By Ed Muderlak
(Collector Books, 800-626-5420, www.collectorbooks.com; 2008)
367 pp. $49.95.

Since the mid-1970s, Ed Muderlak has treasured and used shotguns built by the preeminent American maker Parker Bros. In this lavish book Muderlak identifies himself as a “hedge-poker” (a derogatory term for rough shooters coined by upper-crust Victorian British driven-game shooters) and admits he’s “hopelessly Parker-centric.” A lot of American shooters might characterize themselves that way, including and especially the 1,100 dues-paying members of the Parker Gun Collectors Assoc., to whom this work will especially appeal.

Some of my English-gun-toting friends might call this volume “much ado about a pretty decent boxlock.” But the book is more than that. It’s a comprehensive, carefully researched work on American double guns and the evolution of wingshooting in this country, with an emphasis on the late19th and early 20th Centuries, when the Parker gun earned its nickname “Old Reliable” and established itself as our nation’s finest domestic shotgun.

The glossy sepia paper suggests parchment. The text is decorated with 600 images, many in color. There are historical photographs, old prints and advertisements, trade cards, sche-matics, and lithographs of factories and  gun-making machinery.

The book’s greatest value lies in its scholarship and breadth. Muderlak notes that when a person purchases and uses a Parker, he or she “buys into the history of the gun.” That history is capably presented here, as the author—using original source material, including rare sporting books, old trade papers and “pulp weeklies”—explains why the Parker shotgun worked as well as it did, why Parker Bros. succeeded when so many other makers failed, and why Parkers today inspire a mystique beyond those of other classic American doubles.

The book includes 44 chapters, three appendices and a bibliography. There’s something to delight the eye or engage the mind on every page—whether a sharp close-up color photo of an individual gun (many of them supplied by the James D. Julia auction company); a sidebar focusing on the life of a famous shooter (John James Audubon or “knights of the trigger” Captain du Bray and Doc Carver); or a detailed technical explanation, such as how lead shot was made round or Damascus barrels were fashioned. Muderlak notes that many modern “practitioners of the ancient art of shooting flying” find a common purpose in honoring the past—a task this book fulfills.

Vintage British Shotguns—A Shooting Sportsman Guide

By Terry Wieland
(Shooting Sportsman Books, 800-685-7962, www.shootingsportsman.com; 2008)
160 pp. $40.

Terry Wieland writes that “the vast majority of Parkers, A.H. Foxes, and Ithacas were duck guns first and upland guns second”—basically meat-getters. In contrast, in Britain during the late 1800s and early 1900s “shotgunning was recreational,” based on shooting large numbers of driven birds and birds flushed by dogs. British guns of the period were made light and well balanced, and by “hand-fitting every single tiny part . . . normal wear and tear was reduced to an absolute minimum or even eliminated altogether”—essential in a gun that might fire thousands of rounds year after year.

Because most older British shotguns were made to such a high standard, many are still around—and are available to American shooters, who have been turning to British guns in droves. And no wonder: Just pick up a lively, lovely sidelock or boxlock from England’s golden era of gunmaking and you immediately will realize that such a tool will do yeoman work in the uplands—if the gun is still in proof and if it has received, over the years, the care that it deserves.

Wieland is the author of Spanish Best: The Fine Shotguns of Spain and Dangerous-Game Rifles. He’s the Shooting Editor for Gray’s Sporting Journal and a contributor to SSM. In an introduction to this new book, Michael McIntosh writes that the work “is meant to condense a long and complex history into something that is both readable and useful.” In general, Vintage British Shotguns achieves those objectives.

Part One, “History and Technicalities,” covers the beginnings and social underpinnings of the British gun trade, differences between guns made in London and Birmingham, what makes a “best” gun best, hammerguns, sidelocks, boxlocks, bolting systems and how to refurbish and modify an English gun. Black & white photographs are scattered throughout, along with mood-type drawings by Susan Norris and a central section of color photos.

Part Two describes 64 well-known (and some obscure) British firms out of the thousands that put their names on guns, with comments by gunmaker Jack Rowe, formerly of Birmingham, England, and now working in Oklahoma; and George Caswell, owner of Champlin Arms, in Enid, Oklahoma, who has bought and sold many English guns.

Wieland believes that the very best English guns were made between 1890 and 1914. (Guns made “between the wars” are also good, but not all of them measure up to those produced before World War I.) Much of the history has been covered by others; Wieland breaks new ground when he describes how to evaluate a gun “that is down on its luck” with an eye toward turning it into something to be hunted with, admired and cherished—as he has done with a beat-up E.M. Reilly 12-bore boxlock found in the rafters of a henhouse and restored by Edwin von Atzigen, a Swiss-born gunmaker working in Canada. The chapter “Blacking the Bits: Exploring the Nooks and Crannies of Gunmaking” offers information concerning pairs and trios, incorrect and fraudulent representation of old guns, and the variety of guns and their unique features.

I’ve used and written about English guns for years. I think most of Wieland’s observations are accurate, but I disagree with some of what he says. He states that Greener and Lancaster were the most prominent makers of two-inch 12 bores—in fact, the Birmingham firm Skimin & Wood was the most prolific maker of such guns. He opines that finding two-inch ammunition “will be difficult”—not so, as at least two American companies now make it and others import the short shells. Wieland asserts that, after the 12, the most common bore size among English guns is the .410. The used-gun lists and what I’ve seen on racks here and in England don’t support that conclusion, which is given without citations or quotes from sources in the trade.

Criticism aside, there’s a lot of useful information in Vintage British Shotguns, including an appendix summarizing British proof markings.

Animal and Sporting Artists in America

By F. Turner Reuter Jr.
(National Sporting Library, 540-687-5780, www.redfoxfineart.com; 2008)
880 pp.
Slipcased standard edition $195;
signed and numbered slipcased limited edition $495.

Turner Reuter is a lifelong outdoorsman with a passion for riding, fishing and hunting and the artwork that depicts these pursuits. An innkeeper and fine-art dealer, he is curator of fine arts at The National Sporting Library, in Middleburg, Virginia. His large-format reference book includes biographies of 2,384 painters and sculptors who have produced work dealing with outdoor sports and animals. It is illustrated with 300 black & white and 100 color reproductions of artwork, including many pieces that have never before been published. The author describes the book as “a reference work designed to assist scholars and collectors in the study of works of art that celebrate animals and chronicle the history of sporting life in this country.”

This fascinating, stunningly produced volume points out what Reuter calls “the essential relationship of art with sport, and sport with art” in America, where a distinctive national style has evolved from the 17th Century to the present. Reuter presents biographies of early masters, such as John James Audubon, and more-recent artists, including Alexander Pope, Franklin Brooke Voss and Robert F. Kuhn. Iconic artists such as Albert Bierstadt, Winslow Homer and Andrew Wyeth also are included.

Produced in limited numbers, this sumptuous book will be instantly collectible. It’s a joy to page through, both for the information in the short biographies and for the way you can feel our rich outdoor heritage come alive in the still-lifes of game; the action paintings of hunting, fishing and horse racing; and the representations of the landscape and its beautiful animals, wild and domesticated.

Legendary Northwoods Animals

By Galen Winter
(Willow Creek Press, 800-850-9453, www.wcpretail.com; 2007)
120 pp. $14.95.

SSM’s own humorist Galen Winter weighs in with a “Farcical Field Guide” to “rare and odd” creatures you may not see unless afflicted with delirium tremens. From what I can tell, Winter is an attorney residing and “practicing law” (as they gamely put it) in Shawano, Wisconsin. Obviously he keeps his eyes and ears open when kicking through the bird coverts. Otherwise he would not know of the Freddycat, a tiny, timid bobcat-lookalike that is the only known “migratory creature which remains year-round in the same locale.” Or the Woose Grock, a woodcock-grouse combination whose “backward construction leads the hunter to believe the bird is moving 180 degrees away from the actual line of its flight,” causing the shooter to lead the bird in the wrong direction and inevitably miss.

The Noch Less Monster, the Antlered Brown Trout, the Blunt-Billed Rockpecker, the Billdad, the Tote-Road Shagamaw—you get the picture. Illustrations are by John Boettcher. So quaff some Scotch or bourbon in grouse or deer camp and read these descriptions out loud to your hunting partners. It will do your soul good, though it may give rise to some unusual dreams.