Die Flinte wird heute von vielen deutschen Jägern als “Staubfänger” definiert, und wenn es so weitergeht, könnte sich die folgende Geschichte in Zukunft in Deutschland abspielen.
Lord Baden-Powell, der Erfinder der Pfadfinderbewegung, war leidenschaftlicher Jäger. Am liebsten ging er in den Kolonien auf die Jagd. Der Kolonialismus ist natürlich schlecht und führt zu nichts Gutem, aber damals hat man es nur geahnt, feste Beweise gab es erst später. So war er einmal in Südafrika bei einem Buren zu Besuch und fragte ihn natürlich, ob es auf seiner Farm etwas zu jagen gäbe.
Von Orten wie diesen ist es schwer zu erzählen. Denn das Letzte, was man dort braucht, sind mehr Menschen. Besucher gibt es da schon viel zu viele. Aber auch, weil einem die Worte fehlen, um solche Schönheit zu beschreiben. Darüber zu schweigen ist aber auch unmöglich.
Mit dieser Anekdote begann vor 12 Jahren meine Karriere als Jagdjournalist.
Im Vereinigten Königreich, genauer gesagt in Schottland, lebte einmal ein Flint- und Büchsenmacher. Damals war das kein seltener Beruf. In jeder anständigen Stadt gab es mindestens einen, und in einigen Vierteln von London und Birmingham konnte man kaum durch die Straßen gehen, ohne von allen Seiten angesprochen zu werden: “Kaufen Sie! Die allerneuste Großkaliberbüchse für die Elefantenjagd!” “Die beste Schrotflinten – mit den verfehlen Sie nie wieder! Nur bei uns!” und so weiter.
Dear readers of the Sportingbookworm blog, thank you for staying with this blog, despite two years of inaction on my side, and sorry about not answering your comments. I am not exactly back again, but there are a few important announcements.
As a citizen of the Russian Federation, I completely and unreservedly denounce the cruel, terrible, unnecessary war that Putin and his government are waging in Ukraine – a war that is wrong on every level and from every possible standpoint.
As the Russian hunting gun industry is a part of the Russian military-industrial complex – the same people who make the weapons that kill the Ukrainian people – I can’t possibly continue the “Russian Hunting Shotguns”, either in the book or in the blog form. This is simply an inappropriate subject at the moment.
I have revised, edited, fact-checked, and supplemented every chapter of the “Russian Hunting Shotguns” that deals with particular models. Nobody realizes better than me how incomplete the data is, and how many facts (and a few more or less rare models) have escaped the manuscript, but new knowledge keeps coming, and the only way to stop the incessant flow of revisions is to say “Basta!”
But there are a few chapters remain to be (re)written, including the one that I feel is going to be the most difficult to write: Proof Marks and Dating Russian Hunting Shotguns.
I’m going to start working on this chapter tomorrow.
As I already wrote, in Russia you can get a rifle license only after you’ve owned a shotgun for at least five years. A few years ago TechKrim, a gun and ammo developer from Izhevsk, figured out a way around this legislation. The law makes an exception for “Paradox” bores, that have rifling only in the last 150 mm. of the barrel or less; in addition, Lancaster’s patent “oval bore” does not have any rifling, and so is legally a smoothbore. IzhMech (Baikal) was the first to take advantage of it and offered 20-gauge shotguns with Lancaster’s oval rifling, but TechKrim went further.
Dropped by the Artemida gun shop in Moscow a couple of weeks ago, to put a couple of guns up for sale. One is a 16-gauge Izh-58, “transitional model” with a “round” receiver like on the “M” and “MA/MAE” series guns, but not yet marked “M”. These were made between 1968 and 1971. It had been an impulse purchase that proved itself a little treasure, and became my go-to gun for a number of years.
The other a 12-gauge Izh-43 that I used very little. I bought it for my Dad in 1996, but he would always put off registering it into his own name, and then when I got married and my wife became interested in hunting and shooting I gave it to her. She wasn’t overly fond of this gun, though, with its square shaped wrist and everything, and could never shoot it well enough. Don’t want these guns just sitting in the safe when they could bring a bit of pleasure to someone else, so up they go for sale.
Artemida is the place to go in Moscow if you’re interested in old, vintage and uncommon hunting guns. If you wanna see how a Purdey Beesley-patent self-opener compares to MTs-11, for example, they are likely to have both on display (unfortunately, Russian gun laws do not allow the salesperson to hand a gun over to a customer who doesn’t possess a valid purchase license). They have good connections with the Austrian and German best gun makers – just before the pandemic they had Johann Springer of Joh. Springer’s Erben with a lecture on gun auctioning and Werner Zodia to look over a few fine guns with a gunsmithing problems. And if I ever need help with an import or export permit for a hunting gun, Artemida would be the first place I go.
The mark of a good gun shop is that you get to learn something new every time you visit it. Before coming over, I surfed their website to find out what prices I could expect for the guns, and one Izh-43 up there was uncommon. Most 12-gauge guns made by IzhMech (a.k.a Baikal) in 1963-1991 have the same barrel dimensions – bore: 18.2 mm, length: 725 mm, chambers: 70 mm, chokes: half (0.5 mm) and full (1.0 mm). But that gun was different: 1988 vintage, it featured 750-mm long barrels choked IM (0.75 mm) and F (1.0) mm. Sorry, no pics – the gun was sold by the time I came there. But it goes to show there are exceptions to each rule.
You live, you learn. Evidently, a Chinese company made a copy of the MTs6 shotgun and sold it in France (probably elsewhere in Europe as well) as “Lion Brand”. “PH12-1” is apparently the model name.
Before Russia, like most of the world, went into self-isolation, the country’s gun shops saw record-breaking sales in guns and ammo – it even made national news.
This surge can’t be explained by the seasonal jump in sales. Russian spring bird hunting seasons start in March in the south and continue to late May in the north of the country, and shops do usually see better business in the said months. However, the current spike is higher than in any previous year, and the type of products sold suggests there are different reasons than the usual pre-season rush.
The Sporting Bookworm's Hermitage 