I’ll pitch this out at the start—I’ve got no bone with American guns. Quite the opposite, actually. Redblooded irons are the lifeblood of my arsenal and, generally speaking, are the first options I’ll grab for a task—be it protecting hearth and home or bagging a freezer full of venison. That said, a man’s eye can wander. When mine does, it usually lands flush on a particular corner of the map: the Mediterranean.
Now, I’m the first to admit the region—for the unwary—is a fertile lemon farm. Who hasn’t heard of or has a personal story about a dreadful Turkish shotgun, so ill-conceived it wouldn’t make an acceptable club?
Fair enough.
Yet, for every troubled smoothbore exported from the Bosporus or persnickety pistol emanating from the Italian Alps, boatloads of top-rate, out-and-out classics are emanating from the Levant. Hell, some of them easily qualify as best-in-class, not to mention as alluring as a bikini-clad, olive-skinned beauty. All you need to know is what to look for when searching out the gems of the Mediterranean.
PEDERSOLI TASCOSA CREEDMOOR ROLLING BLOCK
Honestly, much of the surface appeal of this rifle is its colorful history. There’s a tingle to wielding among the most utilized single-shots in history, one that’s proven its mettle as one of the all-time great precision arms. Yet, there’s more happening with the Italian reproduction than purely a façade of nostalgia for a golden age of riflesmithing. Plain and simple, the Pedersoli Rolling Block
