Keeping it in the pink

modest bookshelf in my sitting-room has been my undoing. Tales of black powder and big-bore shotguns have pushed and moulded me into a traditionalist. We fowlers already walk the ground that our forefathers walked. We crouch and shiver just as they did in the same mud-filled gutters hoping to get within shot of the wildest and wariest of birds that grace our coasts. To take a step further into history, some turn to big-bore breechloading 10-, eight- and four-bores. Lovely beasts but expensive.