Swivel-Guns - Breechloaders And Muzzleloaders

By Ralph P. Gallwey

This early manual on swivel-guns is both expensive and hard to find in its first edition. It will prove of great interest to the present day gun enthusiast and historian of weaponry. Illustrated with black and white drawings. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Apr 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781473383746

Book preview

Swivel-Guns

SWIVEL-GUNS.

OF these there are two kinds, breechloaders and muzzleloaders. The former are far preferable to the latter, provided they have the same advantages of lightness, of strength, and of hard shooting power. But, even at the present day, not many breech-loading swivel-guns are made that can rival muzzleloaders in these respects. The breechloaders are, with few exceptions, ponderous and very costly, as well as ungainly, and bad shooters.

Breechloading swivel-guns can be loaded very quickly compared with the time necessary for a muzzle-loader; but it must be borne in mind that quickness of loading, when only three or four shots at most are fired in a day, is no great advantage, whilst weight is a disadvantage, all fowlers complaining of it in a swivel-gun.

Muzzle-loading swivel-guns are cheap, handy, and simple; they are not likely to get out of order, and will stand any amount of rough work and knocking about. Breechloaders are usually most intricate pieces of mechanism, and require considerable care.

People who know nothing of the practice of punt shooting suppose that, because a swivel-gun can be charged at the breech, it is the only kind of weapon fit for the sport, and that a muzzleloader is useless in comparison. It is a fallacy to think that, because shoulder guns are so vastly improved by being breechloaders, swivel-guns must of necessity be similarly valuable. The uses of the two guns are totally different, and no comparison is possible.

In land-game shooting a gun is required to be loaded at all times, ready for any shot that may be presented, and after firing is loaded instantly for the next chance. In punting the shots are slow, few, and deliberate; the shot is seen or expected long before it is taken, and after a discharge there is no necessity to load again hurriedly.

This is written, not to disparage breechloading swivel-guns, but to show that our old friends the muzzle-loaders are good enough to go a-fowling with, and to advise all shooters to use a good muzzle-loader in preference to a bad breechloader.

That rara avis, a good breechloader—one which meets all the requirements of punting—is a more convenient gun, in its ease of loading, than a muzzle-loader, but in nothing else.

A fowler who used at all times a breechloading swivel-gun would probably not kill a bird more than the man who always used a muzzle-loader, but the former would have least trouble, and charging his gun would probably take him two