Why Won’t the Single Shot Shotgun Die?
For many shooters, the one shot wonder that is the single-barreled hinge break shotgun is their first experience with any sort of gauge. This simple design predates almost everything on the market today and is arguably obsolete. It however is one design that just refuses to go away.
Remember the crazy looking trumpet-barrel guns you have always seen illustrations of the pilgrims strutting around with? Well those were
blunderbusses and, while the Mayflower colonists actually didn’t have any, they were one of the first shotguns.
Large caliber smooth bored muzzleloaders, these guns were great for self-defense at close range or taking deer with large shot. With smaller shot, they could make a decent fowling piece for birds and varmints. Versatile as they were, these guns required users to load each shot manually, measuring and tamping down charges of blackpowder, wads and projectiles in what amounted to a fairly clumsy and sometimes unsafe procedure.
By 1836, a character named Lefaucheux developed a breech-loading shotgun that took a self-contained pinfire cartridge. Lefaucheux’s scattergun used a hinged break-open design to give access to the chamber for loading and unloading and by the 1870s paper-hulled break-action singled-barreled shotguns (with half the firepower of their double-barreled brothers) abounded on the market. A number of companies, including Stevens and H&R built their name on a foundation of these guns way back then and are still around today because of the design. The thing is, even when passed up by the rapidly appearing technology of the pump action (1882 Spencer) and the semi-auto (1898’s Browning Auto Five); the single shot hinge break has still found a place in shooters’ gun closets.
Read the rest in my column at Guns.com
