Chapter III: Preface

A preface can be considered a word of apology, an explanation, or a bit of spice to smell good and tempt the jaded appetite into eating a concoction. No apology should be required for writing a book on shotguns at this time, and now if ever the sportsman’s appetite ought to be keen for just such a work.

However cleverly written, an essay on guns soon becomes old and valueless. Changes and improvements in fire arms have taken place so rapidly that a treatise on such weapons dated twenty-five years ago might as well have been restricted to the muzzle-loader. Probably it will be the same in the future, though we of to-day are prone to think that little further improvement in double guns is possible.

Clever magazine articles on sporting arms appear from time to time, but in book form nothing of note on shotguns has issued from an American press in the last generation. Such works as we have on the subject are from English authorities, and, unfortunately, are merely more or less carefully disguised advertisements of some particular make of English arm. Reading one of these volumes, the conclusion would be unavoidable that there is really only one country that can build a shotgun worth owning, England, and but one weapon there that is quite worth while, the particular arm to which the book is devoted. Other British guns are known to the author apparently, but are so generally inferior to the author’s favorite that simply mentioning their names would be a waste of valuable space. All this despite the fact that the books purport to treat of British guns in general.

The author is a strong believer in American guns. He holds that we can not only build a better gun for the money than any country, but as good a weapon as can be purchased anywhere, for any amount of money.

He hopes to show in the pages that follow a spirit of fairness and justice toward all our gunbuilders, without fear or partiality or prejudice. Where he has ventured to criticise it has been in the interest of the reader as tending to future improvements. Neither has he considered it necessary to proclaim that America alone makes fine guns. What he is willing to affirm is that in model and mechanics our shotguns are superior and that the system of manufacture developed here permits our factories to put more value into a gun than is possible elsewhere, except in such grade of arms as to make the cost of no consideration.

The information and ideas contained in the succeeding chapters are mostly the results of a personal study of fire arms. Perhaps it is not a graceful thing to say, but the author can acknowledge himself little indebted to any gunbuilder for inside or technical information. Such facts as in the nature of things would be known only to the builders have generally been withheld under the plea that they are trade secrets.

For instance, no manufacturer would give the inside diameter of the bore of one of his barrels at all points, under the apparent belief that this would betray his system of boring. This is rather absurd on the face of it since any gunsmith could take the measurements at will. Perhaps one of the builders puts the matter fairly from their standpoint when he states that, “there are a good many things which the general public is fully as well off without knowing.” Notwithstanding this, the writer, not believing in the ignorance is bliss foolishness, has given all the conclusions at which he could arrive by a close study of the subject.

Care has been taken in this book not to give special mention to any make of arm, but all our prominent gunbuilders will be found well represented in the illustrations. Many of the latter are from photographs taken expressly for this book, and never before appearing in print.

In the wing-shooting department of the book the writer has found himself obliged to blaze a path of his own. With such text books as might have been available he was unable to agree for the most part. The system of wing-shooting here set forth is his own, and if it tells anything will add to the sum of what has been said before because it is different.

Thirty years of active life afield have given him convictions that for himself personally, to put it in a Rooseveltian way, outweighed the conclusions of others at such points as we failed to agree. If the writer is to acknowledge himself indebted to any source for theories and shooting principles, it is not to books, but to the many expert shots who have tramped cover and field with him in the course of many long shooting days. If the book is anything it is practical, and where theories have been advanced they have been proved in practice or cast aside.

In writing on this subject the author discovered fresh fields and coverts untouched. Since the days of Frank Forester, Lewis, and Thos. Alexander little has been written of the art of wing-shooting that merits long life or much consideration. Pigeon and trap work have been well handled, and others have confined themselves to wild-fowling, but nothing has been written of a general nature on the principles and science of wing-shooting.

CHAS. ASKINS.

Ames, Oklahoma, August 16th, 1910.