Now that’s a heck of a combo
Vierlings (from the German word Vier, meaning “four”) are very odd four-barreled combination guns that come from two layers of thought.
This four-barreled Vierling has two 8x57R rifle barrels, a .22 Hornet on top and a 20-gauge below.
One, that when packing for a great overseas hunt where an adventurer’s baggage would ideally fit all in a large steamer trunk, such a weapon could contain both small and large-caliber rifles and/or shotguns to encompass everything from varmint to big game while on safari. Two, in some countries where gun licensing restricted an owner to a numerically small number of firearms (sometimes just a single long arm), a Vierling in multiple chamberings could allow flexibility. In both cases, the idea was to get the most out of a single frame.
With that in mind, the vaunted Austrian gunmaker Johann Fanzoj, with some 500 years of builds under their name, recently produced a beautiful Vierling made of a side-by-side double rifle in hard-hitting 9.3x74mmR– a classic medium to large game round popular in both Europe and Africa — with an over-and-under 20-gauge 3-inch chambered shotgun on a single frame.
It is truly a work of art…
More in my column at Guns.com.