Shotgun Stories

BLACKBIRDS

Starlings cover the sky at different times of the year. The air is literally black with them. They eat of the fields of grain, devour the grain put out for livestock and are a general nuisance. But they are fun to shoot. One year I had about 200 shells loaded and sat out near the back porch shooting blackbirds as they came over. I do not know how many I got, but the ground around the house and in the near pasture was littered with the carcasses. It made not a bit of difference in how many there were next year!

Shooting the blackbirds in flight is really great practice. They come by at all different angles and heights and speeds. When I managed to hit one now and then it was fun to watch their reactions. Some folded their wings and came straight down. Others looked like a WW I fighter that had been shot down, circling in with feathers rumpled, hitting the earth like a biplane crashing. Some would fly straight on for a little ways, fold one wing and spiral in. My Dad sat out there and watched me shoot birds, and laughed all afternoon. It was great entertainment.

This Spring (1995) I inherited all of my father-in-law's shotgun shells after he passed away. There was around 400 of them. Most were ones he had loaded himself. Many were loaded very weirdly. Some had little shot in them, the crimp being rolled in and the shot held from falling out by a wad of toilet paper stuffed into the end of the shell. Others bulged up, looking as if they were too full. Some looked OK. I decided to fire the weird ones first. Every morning for several weeks I took a handful of shells and walked out to check the cows and to shoot blackbirds as I went. Some of the shells went off fine. Others went FLOOP and I could see the shot charge go at about the velocity of a BB gun. Still others went PFFF and then I had to go back to the shop and get a rod to shove everything out of the barrel. Some went KAWHAM and nearly broke my shoulder when they went off. However, none blew the shotgun up for which I was grateful. I managed to kill quite a few blackbirds. In fact, the yard around the house was littered with them. I let them lay for a day or so, then just mowed them with lawnmower. They mulched up real well and seemed to help the yard grow.

FAST AND FURIOUS

One Arizona spring my friend Dale South and I went out on the cattle ponds to shoot doves. Dale had borrowed his brother's Browning 12 gauge autoloader while I was using my old Steven single-barrel. The doves came in fast and furious that morning and the air was literally thick with them. I do believe that if I had a baseball bat I could have knocked some down. They were flying right past our faces and landing within 10 feet of us. The shooting was equally as fast. At one point a dove landed within 10 feet of Dale and in his haste he just up and blew it to bits! There was a big explosion of feathers and nothing else was left. I was shooting as fast as I could with a single shot, but I could not keep up with the autoloader of Dale's, that is until he stuffed shells into the magazine backwards and tied up the gun. He was so wound up he took some time clearing the jam and allowed me to get ahead of him in the body count.

PIGEONS

The pigeons here roost in the barns, eat the feed, crap on everything and give animals mites. They really are a dirty bird. I have fun once in a while going out and busting a few. I had two that were constantly roosting in my cow shed. One morning I slipped down with the short double barrel and rousted the pigeons off their roost. As they came busting out of the barn flapping for all they were worth, I let fly. I got the far one with the first barrel and the near one with the second. It was great fun but over too quickly.

One day my neighbor told me there were some pigeons roosting in his barn and asked if I would go and shoot some of them. I took the single barrel Stevens and walked over. Only one bird came out and as it went away from me I shot. I knocked a few feathers out of it's tail, but it just kept on going. I automatically ejected the empty and reached for another shell in my pocket as the bird started to make a circle around me. As it came back past I swung up and led it just a bit and tumbled it into the pasture.

Later the same neighbor told me I didn't do too good a job on the pigeons as there were still some in one of his cow sheds. I took the Maverick pump with the 18 1/2" barrel and walked up to his cow shed one evening. As I walked up two pigeons came busting out, flapping hard and trying to gain altitude. I swung on one and dropped it, pumped the gun and swung on the other one and dropped it. The cow shed is located about 50 yards behind the Baptist Church and the pigeons had to either go around it or up over it. They choose to head for it, trying to climb over it I suppose, and it gave me a nice shot. The Church also acted as a nice backstop so I did not have to worry about dropping shot into the neighbor's yard. Good thing the Baptists were loud singers. No one came out to see what I was doing.

SCARY!

Late one night the dog started barking and woke me out of a dead sleep. I heard a car cruising slowly by the house, then it stopped and shut the engine off. I was up by that time and grabbed the short double-barrel 12 gauge. Clad only in my underwear I slipped out on the porch and holding a mag-light under the barrel of the shotgun, I lit up the car. The engine started and the car roared off into the night without turning it's lights on. I guess the sight of a nearly naked fat guy with a sawed-off shotgun was too much for them.

DOGS

Early one morning I heard dogs barking and cows bawling. I figured someone's dogs were into the cattle and grabbed the sawed-off Stevens double and ran out the door. One barrel was loaded with my round ball load while the other had a 3" Magnum BB load in it. I went up over the hill and looked down into the small valley and here were two dogs chasing a bunch of heifers. They had them cornered in the pasture and were worrying them a bit. I shot at one of the dogs with the ball load from 75 or 80 yards and missed. The noise of me shooting diverted their attention long enough for the ranch foreman and his hand to run their horses up on the dogs and shoot one of them. The other, a large German Shepherd, took off from them and came running past me about 30 - 35 yards out. I swung the double gun on it and touched off the other barrel. The load of BB took him square and stopped him in his tracks! He froze, shook all over and fell over kicking. The foreman came riding up and took the collar off the dog so he could file charges on the owner for damage to his cows. He saw me make the shot and was mighty impressed with the performance of the short gun.