Game & Gun Gazette

Vintage Cup Preview
    Perhaps it started when Edward VII set the clocks at Sandringham a half-hour fast to make more time for his game shooting. The Edwardian age, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, gave birth to the great shooting parties featuring Ripon, Walsingham and Duleep Singh. It was also the time that the English “best” side-by-side was perfected.
    A century later, in 1994, The Order of Edwardian Gunners, commonly known as the Vintagers, was formed to celebrate the shotguns and the shooting spirit of the Edwardian age. From one small New England group, the Vintagers has grown to 10 chapters in the US and one in Australia.
    The chapter meetings focus on sharing an appreciation of double guns, some friendly clay shooting with same, and then often a meal of Edwardian proportions. There was a reason that Edward was known as “Tum Tum” to his friends.
With chapters spread throughout the country, it was appropriate to have an annual celebration where all Vintagers members could come together to show and shoot their doubles, peruse vendors’ guns and share a common enthusiasm. In 1997 the first Vintage Cup, World Side-by-Side Championships and Exhibition was held at Addieville East, in Mapleville, Rhode Island. From 1999 to 2006 the Vintage Cup continued to grow at Orvis Sandanona, in Millbrook, New York. Since then it has been at picturesque Pintail Point, on the Wye River near the Chesapeake Bay in Queenstown, Maryland.
    This year’s Vintage Cup at Pintail Point will closely follow last year’s form. The dates are Thursday, September 24, through Sunday, September 27. In terms of shotgun shooting, first on the list will be the Small Gauge events, sponsored by Shooting Sportsman. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday these events will include separate 50-bird contests for 16, 20, 28 and .410 doubles in both hammer and hammerless classes, plus 24 and 32 gauge.
    On Friday and Saturday there will be events for hammer and hammerless 10- and 12-gauge guns, plus a hot-barrel Paired Gun event and a Two Man team event, each presenting 200 targets in four minutes. These are great fun to watch, and they draw a lot of spectators. There is even a Black Powder 50-bird event for those who prefer a little pre-Edwardian challenge.
Sunday is the 130-bird World Side-By-Side Championship main event with hammer and hammerless divisions. In all, it’s possible to shoot more than 1,330 clays in the different events. Of course, you’d need almost 20 different side-by-sides to do it all. And that’s not counting the four rifle events for Drillings, Cape guns, and stalking and stopping rifles that take place on Thursday and Friday.
    Many people enjoy coming as spectators. It’s great fun to watch the shooting events whether you enter them or not. Last year I particularly enjoyed a sideshow called The Gnat. It featured a radio-controlled flying-wing model airplane that you tried to shoot as it flew by like a jet-assisted mallard. Explosive disks under the wing gave a satisfying smoky puff when hit. I hope The Gnat will be back this year. It was a hoot.
    Marque clubs, such as the Parker, Fox, L.C. Smith and German Gun collectors groups, can be expected. (For the past few years the Parker Gun Collectors Association has held its annual meeting in conjunction with the event.) Gun Vendors’ Row always fills a number of tents. Many of the big English and Italian makers are expected to return this year. There will be a mind-numbing selection of upper-end guns from US gun sellers as well as a variety of vendors selling accoutrements, art, clothing, books, shells and more. There are gun shows all over the country, but not like this.
    The atmosphere is relaxed and polite. It is a great chance to stop and chat with the people who actually make the guns or with those who run the storied gunshops.
    For information and registration forms, contact Ray Poudrier, 413-339-5347; www.vintagers.org. —Bruce Buck
 
Game Conservancy USA Showcase '09
    Lovers of fine guns and sporting clays should mark their calendars for September 11 to 13—the dates for this year’s Griffin & Howe-sponsored Game Conservancy USA Showcase. The showcase, now in its fourth year, is held on the beautiful grounds and surrounding woodlands of Hudson Farm near Andover in rural northern New Jersey. The event, staged at the home of the Griffin & Howe shooting school, is a fund-raiser to benefit upland bird research in the UK and educate all interested parties about progressive wild-gamebird management.
    A host of gun companies, artists and shooting-related vendors will be in attendance this year, including Antonio Zoli, Blazer, Boss & Co., Charles Boswell, Brays Island, Christopher Smith Sculptor, Dickson & MacNaughton, Dubarry of Ireland, Fair Chase, Geoffery Gournet Engraving, Griffin & Howe, HiDefSpecs, J.P. Sauer, Holland & Holland, Holloway & Naughton, J.W. Hulme, Krieghoff International, Lebeau-Courally, Leonard Logsdail bespoke tailor, Lewis Drake & Assoc., Kent Cartridge, Patrick Mavros Silver, Mauser, Miller Motorcars, Mitchell Peck Jewelers, Nate Heineke Riflemaker, Presnell Sporting Timeshares, James Purdey & Sons, Rizzini USA, Safari Jewelers, TGB Outfitters Argentina, Verney-Carron, William Evans, William & Son, and Zeiss. Shooting coaches and instruction also will be available from G&H’s Shooting School staff and Shooting Sportsman Contributing Editor Chris Batha, who will stay on the following week for gunfittings and private instruction.
    It all starts Friday at 1 pm, when the vendor tent opens to the public. The gate fee is $20 to those not attending the private charity auction that evening. The clays tournament will kick off at 9:30 am Saturday and inaugurate the completely new 20-station “quail-theme” course. On Sunday another completely new course with a “pheasant theme” will be introduced. Up to 100 guns can be accommodated both days, and trophies will be awarded. The vendors will be on hand both days, showing from 9 to 5 on Saturday and 9 to 3 on Sunday. There also will be a display-model Purdey 20-bore hammergun available for shooting.
    For more information, contact Lorraine Smario at Griffin & Howe, 203-661-7900; www.gcusa.org. —Clair Kofoed
 
Kessler Canyon Master Gunmakers Week
    For fine-gun aficionados, what could be better than spending several days with some of the world’s top gunmakers and engravers? How about doing so at a luxury resort and being able to enjoy first-class wingshooting as well? Thanks to Kessler Canyon, in DeBeque, Colorado, it’s now possible to do it all at the resort’s Master Gunmakers Week, slated for October 8 to 14.
    The event will take place as two 2-1/2-day sessions, during which attendees will have an opportunity to meet and hunt with gunmakers Tullio Fabbri and Manuel Piotti and engravers Stefano Pedretti and Manrico Torcoli. And they will do this while enjoying the grounds and amenities of Kessler’s five-star resort (see Going Places, July/August), comprising 23,000 acres and boasting excellent hunting for chukar and pheasants and a state-of-the-art clay-shooting facility. During each session special presentations on gunmaking and engraving will be made, and guests will be given a chance to test drive Fabbri and Piotti guns and receive gunfittings and clay-shooting instruction from Griffin & Howe personnel.
    According to Mark Kessler, Senior Vice-President of Marketing and Business Relations and co-host of the event with his father, Richard, “This first-ever event was created to showcase the spectacular nature of our unique sportsman’s resort. What better way than to combine an upland hunt of a lifetime with the finest guns in the world?”
    In addition to the presentations and shooting, attendees will see works in progress by Fabbri, Piotti and the master engravers. The Kessler Collection of fine guns and sporting art will be on display as well.
    There is room for 20 attendees per session, and the all-inclusive price is $4,400 if booked by July 31, $4,900 after that.
For more information, contact Dan Blanco at Kessler Canyon, 866-548-3267; www.kesslercanyon.com. —Ralph P. Stuart
 
The Barbour Linhope Jacket
    These days there’s more than just waxed cotton in Barbour’s line of field clothing; the venerable maker has gone high tech. This past season I wore one of the company’s new products called the Linhope Jacket. I’ve never had a garment that provided so much freedom of movement through the arms and shoulders along with the weather protection expected from Barbour. Raising the gun for a shot, even a high overhead shot, leads to none of the usual binding or restriction, and the body of the coat barely moves at all—nor do the sleeves ride up. Nor is there awkwardly bunched-up fabric under the gun butt at the shoulder.
    This is partly due to the unusual softness of the garment, allowing for a fuller cut, and to its “articulated” construction. The Linhope was created for Barbour by Lord James Percy, an avid shot and evidently a clothing-design consultant too. A size Large Linhope Lightweight fits my 42-jacket/33" sleeve frame with ample room for a sweater or quilted vest beneath. Barbour calls it a jacket, but by any definition this is a coat—it extends a good foot and a half beyond my hips. It’s long enough to sit on (the skirt area is reinforced for just that), and it covers the tops of my rain chaps.
    The Linhope’s outer fabric is an unusually soft and quiet Cordura, a highly abrasion-resistant polyamide (nylon, Rayon) fiber that came into use in World War II, first in military tires. The hung lining, also a synthetic weave, is equally soft and comfortable as well as slightly slippery. (Getting in and out is easy, even over fleece.) The waterproofing comes from sealed seams and a microporous membrane laminated onto the fabric. The coat blocks wind and rain yet “breathes.” The drop liner traps some body heat between itself and the outer shell and provides a bellows effect that also helps vent moisture. For particularly foul conditions there’s a snap-on, drawstring hood that’s crushable enough to stow away in one of the jacket’s six pockets (so it isn’t back at the gun bus when you need it). Fully done up over Wellies and rain trousers, the Linhope keeps you snug and dry in a gale.
    The sleeves have long internal cuffs of soft elastic material, and the outer cuffs can be tightened with a snap-strap. There’s an adjustable elastic drawcord at the waist, and the north-south closure is a two-way zipper (with the pull on the left, British-style) covered with a snapped storm fly. Zip and snaps run to the top of the high collar, where there’s a hook-and-loop patch. The collar is lined inside with soft, comfortable microfleece. There is a zipped inside “letter” pocket, easy to reach, for a hunting license or shotgun permit. If I decant a box of cartridges into one of the bellows pockets, I can snap the flap up and out of the way with a strap that emerges from the fleece-lined handwarmer pockets above. The bellows pockets have grommeted drain holes.
    Linhope is James Percy’s family estate in the Cheviot Hills of Northumberland, in the grouse, red deer and salmon country just south of the Scottish Borders, not far from Alnwick (home of the House of Hardy, fishing-tackle makers) and Barbour’s base in South Shields. In addition to the Lightweight reviewed here, there are three other Linhope garments: an Endurance 3-in-1 model with a removable “bodywarmer” for shooting in real cold; a Featherweight, which is pretty much just a rain/wind shell; and a waistcoat, or vest.
    The Lightweight is an exceptionally functional, flexible and comfortable piece of shooting kit with but one caveat for certain American gunners. Yes, at $579 it’s pricey, but you get what you pay for, including a two-year guarantee against defects. Yes, in olive green it’s depressingly GI-looking, but then this is the universal hunting color. (A Linhope would be useful in the colder parts of Africa in July and August.) The fabric is so soft that the snaps on the pocket and storm flaps don’t line themselves up, as on a stiffer garment, and—here’s that caveat—although it’s Cordura, it’s not meant for plunging through New England or upper-Midwest hawthorns and wild raspberry canes, which simply skitter off waxed cotton. This is for shooting in the open, be it a duck blind, the Dakota plains, Hun and chukar country, or a driven day.
    Finally, it lacks the raffish, leathery look of well-worn waxed cotton. But the Linhope is machine-washable and doesn’t need treating or waxing, which always raises cain in my kitchen. So now I wear my battered, atmospheric, waxed Barbours in town and save the Linhope for the field. For more information, contact Barbour, 800-338-3474 or 603-673-1313; www.barbour.com. —Silvio Calabi
 
F.lli Bertuzzi Down-Shifting
    Italian gunmaker F.lli Bertuzzi, known as the Ferrari of gunmakers, may be in its final year. Elio and Remigio Bertuzzi, both in their 70s and scions of a gunmaking dynasty dating from the 19th Century, will build guns through the end of 2009 and then reevaluate. “Yes, unfortunately, Bertuzzi is taking no more orders,” said British importer Tony Kennedy, “as [the brothers] are going to retire and just complete the orders in. I think that they are getting close to pension age, and as no sons want to be in the business, they have decided that this is the end of the line. I think and hope that they will still want to use their skills by outworking, as they really are good gunmakers.”
    The brothers, who live in Gardone, and their outworkers produce only about two dozen bespoke guns each year—mostly sidelock over/unders and side-by-sides. SSM Senior Editor Vic Venters reviewed the company’s Orione round-bodied boxlock ejector in May/June 2001 and called it “one of my all-time faves.”
    Bertuzzi’s “seagull-wing” Zeus over/under and Venere (Venus) side-by-side may have more in common with the Mercedes-Benz 300SL gull-wing coupe than any magenta motorcar from Modena. Venters said of the company’s Boss-style Zeus: “It is one of the most extraordinary examples of contemporary gunmaking I’ve ever seen.” The over/under doesn’t so much embody Italian style as it does define it.
    Patrick Hawes was at Christie’s when a Zeus cruised through the auction house. “I remember the gull-wing well,” Hawes said. “I cataloged it, helped design the [auction catalog’s] front cover and looked at it in amazement a number of times. The hinge was virtually invisible to the naked eye and beautifully hidden by engravings of trees. The gun sold for £50,000 hammer, or £60,000 including premium.”
    Relatively few seagull-wing Zeus and Venere guns have been made, ensuring exclusivity and added value for those wise—and wealthy—enough to have purchased them. The last few were sold by Tony Kennedy to Robin Hollow Outfitters (www.robinhollow.com). Recently, I asked Bill Hadfield of Robin Hollow if he had any seagull-wing Bertuzzis on offer: “I’m sorry we don’t, but we do have some round-bodies and a matched pair of sidelocks. All are side-by-sides.” These are models with a lot under the hood, and no doubt someone will leap into the driver’s seat and put their foot on the gas before the tank is empty. —Douglas Tate
 
Custom Stockmaker D’Arcy Echols
    Gunmaker D’Arcy Echols is famous for his rifles. His walnut-stocked bolt-action and single-shot specimens are arguably as finely finished as any made anywhere, ever. Trained in the Montana shop of doyen custom riflesmith Jerry Fisher, Echols has taken the rifle genre to the nth degree. And all of his rifles are “interesting” in the Townsend Whelen sense of the word: They simply shoot.
    Among hunters of dangerous game, Echols also is well known for putting together “big bores,” with .458 Lotts, .510 Lindebaughs and .505 Gibbs being stock-in-trade. In addition Echols has developed his own Legend brand of synthetic-stocked custom bolt guns that combine ultra-accuracy with durability. Just the thing, say, for that Marco Polo ram skylined in the crags of Tajikistan at 350 meters.
    But this isn’t a rifleman’s magazine; why should a shotgunner care about Echols? There are several reasons. First and foremost, gunsmiths at Echols’ level are truly “human resources.” They should be recognized simply for their intrinsic value in an age where “best” work is a fading commodity. Furthermore, Echols can and will stock shotguns. Of course you can expect to pay world-class prices for world-class work. A few years ago an Echols-stocked Browning Superposed engraved by Lynton McKenzie sold for more than $25,000.
    On a more pedestrian level, Echols also offers an affordable service that owners of fine shotguns often need: semi-inletting stock wood on a duplicating pantograph. Owners needing this service can either work with Echols directly or have their stockmaker contact him. Why would you want to pay Echols $500 for this? A stock duplicator is a tool like any other; for a quality outcome, much depends on the quality of the tool itself, but as much or more depends on the skill of the operator. Many a fine stick of walnut has been reduced to mediocrity or worse between the spindles of a pantograph.
    The Hoenig-Rodman gunstock pantograph is the nonpareil of duplicators. Invented by George Hoenig not for speed but for accuracy in inletting, there are only about 40 such machines (including two in London) in the world. Unfortunately, Hoenig stopped production some years ago (although he is working to make them available again). Echols uses the last model made—and he uses it well. Others have noted this, and as a result Echols gets outwork for duplicating stocks for “best” sidelocks from some of the biggest names in the double-gun trade. David Trevallion has used him for years and praises his work.
    A perfectionist, Echols employs custom-designed cutters and insists that the pattern stock supplied be of high quality. He will cut the stock any way the customer wishes, leaving portions oversize in places, for example, or inletting only the head and upper wrist so the butt can be hand tailored to the client’s dimensions by the stocker. Of course the ultimate outcome of any machine-cut stock depends on the quality of the final inletting and finishing. If that work is done properly, an Echols-cut stock approaches perfection.
    Echols also will do a complete custom stocking, checkering and finishing job (he will not do just final inletting), with prices starting at $10,000.
    For more information on a restocking project, call D’Arcy Echols & Co. in Millville, Utah: 435-755-6842. —Clair Kofoed

A Case for a ‘Best’ Gun Case
    We’ve all seen it: a superb sidelock ejector stocked to the fences and engraved by one of yesteryear’s greats stuffed into a cheap canvas case with a poorly reproduced trade label—a perfectly seaworthy vessel spoiled for a half-penneth of tar. The key word when acquiring a gun case is “appropriate.” A canvas Brady case is the ideal accoutrement for a Birmingham boxlock, and oak & leather is the way to go when it comes to a London sidelock. But what about those high-art guns with deeply chased engraving by the Brown Brothers or multiple gold inlays by Phil Coggan? I’m here to tell you that Vince Rickards is your man.
    Rickards is a classically trained cabinetmaker who began crafting gun cases and firearms display cabinets after a meeting at Holland & Holland 25 years ago. An initial assignment for a pistol case led to special orders for furniture to display H&H’s Broadlands and Civil War multiple gun sets. Commissions for gun cases from private clients naturally followed, with orders for coverings of exotic hides such as crocodile, alligator and ostrich. According to Rickards’ Website: “Our gun cases—made only to order—range from the very exclusive veneered exhibition cases using specially selected veneers such as rosewood, macassar ebony, thuya and walnut with solid ebony lippings and inlays, to our traditional oak and leather case.”
    Gun-case interiors are lined with cloth or leather, or for that opulent museum-quality look, goatskin, which is receptive to gold tooling. The gunmaker’s name is then applied directly to the inside of the case lid, precluding the use of an ordinary trade label. Renowned toolmaker Mike Marsh provides the accoutrements traditionally housed with presentation-quality firearms, and turnscrew handles are available in horn, rosewood, ebony, walnut and even mammoth tusk. Veneered cases can be customized with hand-cut marquetry by master craftsman Stuart King, who can reproduce the scenes or subjects with which the guns are engraved.
    So if you need a bureau for your Boss, a portmanteau for your Purdey or a campaign chest for your Holland & Holland best, a good case can be made for contacting Vince Rickards (01144-1793-765251; www.vincent rickards.co.uk).          —Douglas Tate