The Single-action Shotgun

The Single-action Shotgun

There's another story Dad used to tell which I would like to share with you.

Shortly after Dad married Mom, she gave him a pump-action twelve-gauge shotgun as a birthday present. This was a beautiful, expensive (for her) and practical gift because Dad loved to hunt ducks on the slough ponds near Albuquerque. This shotgun would fire about eight times from it's magazine without re-loading--- you just pumped the gun's lever to eject the spent shell and it would automatically re-load itself and be ready to fire again--- you didn't need to take your eye off the moving target--- the flying duck.

In these long-ago days, thousands of ducks would be flying their migration path south in the autumn and north in the spring and Dad's hunting would provide tasty meals for the young couple and their friends. (The city grew, the ponds were drained and the ducks have vanished.)

Dad would hunt with his friend Danny Jucket (isn't that a lovely name?) and a Mexican I know only as "The Mexican".

Dad and Danny had repeating shotguns. The Mexican had only a single-action shotgun. This meant that The Mexican's gun had to be manually re-loaded after every shot.

Dad said The Mexican would place a shotgun shell between every finger of both hands and when the ducks came into range he would shoot, break the gun open which ejected the empty shell, slip in another shell, close the gun, aim and shoot again with lightning-like speed.

"He could shoot almost as fast as we could with our repeaters and got about as many ducks too!"

This incredible skill pleased Dad so well that he was still remembering it with pleasure sixty years later and thousands of miles away as we shared a glass of port in the California afternoon.

When I reached twelve years of age--the age when a boy became a man back then--Dad bought me, as a birthday gift, a single-action "410" shotgun.

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