Taking stock of gunfit
It is hardly possible to review the shooting literature of the past couple of centuries without noticing how little attention, comparatively speaking, our ancestors paid to the stocks of their guns and to the science of gunfitting.
Hawker, it is true, stresses the desirability of a good fit and praises his favourite gunmaker, Joseph Manton, for his happy knack of achieving it. But he does not develop the subject, nor do any of his contemporaries that I have ever read. The average shooter, we may infer, was even less interested.
The reason for this neglect is not far to seek. In the days of the flintlock, when partridges were the
