Our Price: $25.00

Hardcover, 240 pages, 6" x 9".

Following the success of his acclaimed books Shotguns and Shooting and More Shotguns and Shooting, Michael McIntosh continues his celebration of the shotgun in Shotguns and Shooting Three. As with his earlier volumes, the subjects covered are wide ranging, from the earliest firearms to the author’s current favorites, and from technical discussions of barrels and ejectors to shooting techniques. McIntosh’s erudite and approachable style is familiar not just from his previous books but also from his columns in Shooting Sportsman magazine. This book will appeal to hunting and gun enthusiasts everywhere.

About the Author
MICHAEL McINTOSH is one of the world’s best-known and most highly respected writers on fine guns and shooting, He has written more than two dozen books and is a regular contributor to such magazines as Shooting Sportsman, Sporting Classics, The Double Gun Journal, and Wildlife Art. He lives in Pella, Iowa.

Excerpt
Excerpt from Chapter 1, “From the Stone Age”
The substantial lapse of time between the trigger and the bang -- whether the mechanism lowered a smoldering fuse to a priming pan or set a serrated wheel spinning against a chunk of pyrite -- so dimmed the chances of hitting an object flying at any angle other than straight away that few gunners even bothered to try.

The change began about 1570 in The Netherlands, where gunmakers devised the snaphaunce lock. It combined the best features of the older systems with the new notion of igniting a powder charge through a striking action—the same concept on which firearms are still made. In the snaphaunce, it involves a chunk of flint gripped in the jaws of a cock. When the sear is tripped, a stout mainspring drives the cock forward, rotating on its axis, so that the flint strikes a steel plate -- variously called the hammer, steel, battery, or frizzen -- and showers sparks into a small pan of priming powder. The flash from this passes through a small vent in the side of the barrel and ignites the powder charge inside.

By the time the new system reached the full extent of its evolution, it not only represented the first truly great age of the sporting gun but also in great measure established the form of the classic gun as we know it today.