Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Keep your powder dry
Luke Davison joins a group of dedicated blackpowder enthusiasts for a driven pheasant day — and finds using 200-year-old guns delightful
The morning had burned off its crisp, cold edge and the bright October sunshine was beating down on the swirling pattern of Damascus barrels and curved hammer-actioned lock plates. We were halfway through the first drive and I’d already had two reasonable opportunities to bring a bird down, but had yet failed to do so with two single shots.
The beating line had nearly cleared the last few yards of maize cover before the edges erupted into a multitude of flapping and flailing as hidden pheasants burst skywards. Choosing a cock bird towards the end of the head, I pulled back both hammers from half-cock to full-cock and raised the Damascus barrels. Both bright, shining percussion caps gleamed in the sunlight as I swung the long gun through the bird and pulled the first trigger.
The shove against my shoulder was longer and more progressive than a usual nitro load, though nearly as firm. The report was seemingly muffled as the muzzles let loose 5ft
the charge into of white smoke and card debris shot skywards. The bird faltered and crumpled in the sky before falling behind the line. “Well done,” called Charlie Dinɒwall, my blackpowder mentor and tutor for the day. “Your first blackpowder pheasant.”
I had been invited by the shoot organiser Jamie Ede to join a group of truly dedicated blackpowder enthusiasts on one of their inaugural blackpowder-only days at Red Rice Home Farm in Hampshire. Red Rice has catered for blackpowder days for quite a few teams and has fine-tuned the day to offer the optimum sporting experience for willing “powderers”.
Vintage regalia
We were shooting five or six drives, pegged for 10 and moving up two places each time, but that’s where the similarities with a standard day end. The pegs themselves are dressed in full vintage regalia. Tweed breeks had been substituted for pale breeches, wellingtons for calf-hide boots, Gore-tex jackets for tail coats and flat caps for silk toppers.
Though modern manufacturers still load and sell a limited range of blackpowder cartridges for modern and classic breechloading guns, we
“Tweed breeks had been substituted for pale breeches, wellingtons for calf-hide boots, Gore-tex jackets for tail coats and flat caps for silk toppers”