Rigby Sidelever Single Shot Rifle

UpNorthMI said:

What a nice little rifle. good luck with the sale. I had many friends in the UK that had old rook rifles, I understand that their period of practical use was relatively short as the real task of rook shooting was quickly taken over by .22lr in the 1900's.

I was lucky enough to do a lot of rook shooting in my younger years in the UK, mainly for large estates across Staffordshire, Derbyshire and Shropshire. Some of the estates had very large rookeries. Culling of "branchers" was a lot of work and often involved more than 500 plus rounds of Eley subsonic hollow point .22lr a day! I typically shot with a friend and he would use a similar amount of ammunition. The hit rate with a scoped bolt action .22lr is typically very high, birds literally rained down for hours, we would often collect some of the young rooks for elder country village residents who enjoyed them and to donate to country pubs and restaurants that would serve traditional game dishes. I heard many stories how during the second world war, every bird was collected and eaten amongst local country villages!

There were many mid May days that involved lying or sitting in the bluebell woods clearing tree by tree. We used to get out the ordinance survey maps and work out the safe direction to shoot with the estate owner to prevent the risk of a bullet coming down in any populated area which was at best typically small villages, most estates were big enough areas to not have any real concern with .22lr subsonic ammunition being used at an angle typically 70 to 80 degrees from the ground. You also thought about the risk of shooting straight up, as what goes up must come down! It truly was an interesting sport and task. In the end this was just a method of controlling rook numbers, there were always plenty of rooks around no matter how many branchers were shot and rookeries stayed very active for decades if not more.

For a number of years that these .300 caliber rook rifles were actively used they must of got through some serious quantity of ammunition back in the day!

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baxterb said:

And man I miss the DGJ... :-(

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85lc said:

Unfortunately, many of the rook rifles in the UK was rebores/chambered to .410 shotgun. My understanding is that these rifles were converted to comply with the UK restrictive gun laws (which do not make sense to most people in the US).

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Red Leg said:

I was just chuckling over the notion that a English or any Continental gunmaker, assuming the particular one still existed, would have a drawer of parts that have been sitting around for a hundred years waiting that eventual service call. Even two modern bespoke firearms of the same model are not like a Model 870 coming off an assembly line. Each part on such a gun is carefully hand fitted. The good news is as @rookhawk notes. A competent gunmaker in this country, experienced European firearms can make and repair whatever is required.

As @rookhawk's listing and comments make perfectly clear, this one requires little but a good home.

Very few firearms are more fun to shoot. I have several. My favorite is Birmingham made with the WR top lever and factory chambered, as engraved on the barrel, in .44 Winchester Center Fire - or as we would now say 44-40. It is my rook "stopping rifle" capable of dropping an enraged cottontail or opossum in his tracks.

That 300 is wonderful rifle and rare opportunity for someone here.

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Altitude sickness said:

Is that original wood? If so it’s amazing. Would it be blasphemous to auger it out to a .410 smoothbore

How much effort/skill and cost to make it a .410

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Altitude sickness said:

I’m playing devils advocate for those on the fence and that don’t have a use for a small caliber rifle.

If it’s about practicality and affordability , there are even more affordable single shot rifles.

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rookhawk said:

The 300 Rook is very easy on brass, allowing many reloadings in its useful life.

There is more to the story than simply thinking that its a GOOD idea to change a rook rifle into a .410 shotgun. It's sort of a terrible idea. The reason Rook rifles are so rare is because of a law change in the UK that occurred around 1923. The Brits introduced gun control and you could not possess rifles if you didn't possess large amounts of land holdings and could demonstrate a practical reason you need that rifle to use on your land. In response, many rook rifles and double rifles were converted into shotguns so the original owner could maintain possession. (Shotgun licenses were easier to get)

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