John Chudzik was a Winchester man, addicted to its famed cornshuckers—Model 97s and Model 12s—but the Belchertown, Massachusetts, resident began to think they were a little on the heavy side and too cumbersome on a clays course. In time, lust crept into his shotgunner’s soul. He was wooed by lightweight side-by-sides, perhaps a lithe 20 gauge. Friend Mike Orlen, a double-gun specialist from nearby Amherst, found him a hammergun made in the early 1900s by the Midland Gun Co. of Birmingham, England.
Chudzik fell in love. So much so that he’s now the national president of the Vintagers Order of Edwardian Gunners. Gentility reigned while Edward was king of England during the first decade of the 20th century, when the epitome of classic side-by-side shotguns were making their debut. Slim of wrist, slender of forearm, lively to mount, these doubles were craft ed by the greatest English gunmakers—Holland & Holland, Purdey, W. C. Scott and a host of others. Not to be slighted are American guns by Fox, L.C. Smith and of course, Parker.
“Members of the order,” Chudzik says “shoot for the love of the gun.”
That I can appreciate. Vintage doubles appeal to me because each is a work of art. Consider the sidelock D-grade Lefever that Grandpop Ieft me. I can picture the engraver at his bench gently tapping his chisels just so, scribing the pointer on the left plate and the setter on the right. Though the Lefever closes crisply with a tight snick and the bores are perfect, I don’t shoot it. The barrels appear to be Damascus, though I’ve been told their twist pattern was derived by etching with litmus paper. Why risk ruining a family heirloom? If I do my part, both dogs will hold their points forever.
More years ago than I like to remember, I shot released ringnecks with a group of Vintagers at Pheasant Ridge Hunting Preserve in Greenwich, New York. The men wore knickers and Norfolk jackets, and the ladies dressed in frill-fronted blouses with puffed sleeves and long tweed skirts with classic doubles broken over their arms. “Eighty percent of life is just showing up,” Woody Allen said. The other 20 percent is being in costume. Like other re-enactors who enjoy traveling back in time, official Vintagers fit that bill to a tee.
The Vintagers Order of Edwardian Gunners enrolls nine chapters in the East, and each chapter stages three or four shoots a year. And numerous sporting clays courses such as Primland in Meadows of Dan, Virginia, offer events for Vintager fans.
Perhaps the premier Vintagers event is the Southern Side by Side Championship and Exhibition Spring Classic held every April at Deep River Sporting Clays, in Sanford, North Carolina. Bill and Mary Kempffer started the tournament in 2000. A similar but smaller shoot, The Fall Classic hosted by the Backwoods Quail Club near Georgetown , South Carolina, began in 2007.
As a youngster, Bill Kempffer says he dropped his first quail with a side-by-side that had a stock held together with so many screws and so much fiction tape that he’d be afraid to shoot it now. He began the Southern Side by Side as a celebration of double guns, and teams compete in the Parker Bros.- L.C. Smith Challenge Cup. Trophies are also awarded in shoots for all recognized bores from .410 to 10 gauge, hammer or hammerless, black powder and American or any other maker. Though the Carolina Vintagers is a sponsor, Edwardian clothing isn’t required.
“Overalls are fine,” Kempffer laughs.
Looking for a classic side-by-side? The Southern Side by Side Spring Classic may be the best place to find one. More than 80 vendors of the finest doubles from Europe and the United States display hundreds of new and used smoothbores. Under the tents you’ll find firms such Atkin Grant & Lang, Charles Boswell, Perugini & Visini and Westley Richards as well as U.S. firms such as Ruger, and Griffin and Howe. Pick one off the rack, click the action open and shut, swing it on an imaginary bird, and let your mind travel with the gun.
The web is wealthy with vintage side-by-sides for sale, but bargains are few. Along with trolling the web, prowl gun shows close to home. Every three or four months, big shows with a hundred or more dealers are held near major cities. Don’t overlook small shows. You may be surprised what you’ll find.
A year or so ago I visited a tiny show at a church in southwestern Virginia. There were only a couple dozen tables, but one of them featured an old 12-gauge Parker without a price tag. I asked the vendor if I could pick it up. The action was delicately engraved, and its 30-inch full and modified barrels were labeled “Titanic Steel.” The gun had an English-style stock with a skeleton butt-plate, but a previous owner had silver-soldered a shield on the rear of its trigger guard to protect his fingers during recoil.
The gun was accompanied by a second set of 26-inch barrels. Marked “Vulcan Steel,” they carried a serial number that differed from the action, and they appeared to have been professionally sawed off. The spare barrels fit the action but the forearm would not snap down. Obviously, this was a high-grade but slightly troubled gun. We settled on $700. Even in its rough shape, it was one hell of a bargain.
Before shooting the gun, I brought it to a gunsmith. Generally, local ’smiths knowledgeable about vintage American and European doubles are scant, but I was lucky. Michael Merker ‘s shop in Hendersonville, North Carolina, is just down the road from where I live. I took the gun and the extra barrels to him. He pushed his glasses down his nose, pondered it, told me that it was a DHE grade, and said he’d see what he could do. Michael disassembled and cleaned the action, removed the shield on the trigger guard, and refit the spare barrels and forearm for little more than half of what I paid for it.
The gun intrigues me. Was this a gun whose owners had lived in the South and swung it on doves? Did it immigrate south from Midwestern prairies where pheasants had risen over its ivory front bead? Had some descendant found it in an attic and asked a buddy to sell it for him at the gun show? The travels of this gun and its owners I’ll always imagine but will never know.
And I’m not the only one who is fascinated by vintage side-by-sides. Interest in vintage guns is certainly growing. In fact, more than 2,400 shooters and spectators attended the Southern Side by Side last spring. These guns aren’t just your grandpappy’s hand-me-downs.
