Double rifle safeties

[VertigoBE]

An interesting attribute of many of the modern hammer guns is that they have a safety just like a hammerless. My Lucchini 20 hammer gun, built in the nineties, is so equipped. It has sear intercept safety just like any quality sidelock and can be used exactly the same way. You can see the safety slide at the top of the action.View attachment 575920

Thanks for sharing this beautiful gun with us.
Just so I have understood it correctly:

- The hammers function like the cocker/decocker on the K-guns
- Once the hammers are back, cocked, another more typical slide safety can be used

Do modern hammer double rifles exist in DG calibers?

V.

 

[Red Leg]

Thanks for sharing this beautiful gun with us.
Just so I have understood it correctly:

- The hammers function like the cocker/decocker on the K-guns
- Once the hammers are back, cocked, another more typical slide safety can be used

Do modern hammer double rifles exist in DG calibers?

V.

Actually it more closely resembles a modern sidelock, but with the added feature of manual locks. In other words, I can have the gun loaded, cocked, and on safe approaching a covey of birds and it is in exactly the same firing condition as the Holland & Holland Royal my hunting partner is carrying. It is just that you can see the hammers of this gun while the Royal's are hidden by the side plates.

 

[Nevada Mike]

At trap or sporting clay shoots or silhouette matches the etiquette is to carry your firearm with the muzzle in the air. If a shotgun goes off with the muzzle down the shot could ricochet off the concrete pad.
Similarly when quail hunting, carrying muzzle down often points it directly at a dog.

At all the clubs and competitions that I have attended the etiquette is to carry your firearm broken open and unloaded until you step into the box or skeet station. A vertical muzzle carry implies a closed gun that is not visibly unloaded.

When I am bird hunting I walk for miles and my dogs are a good distance in front of me, searching for birds. Approaching a dog on point is almost always done moving up to one side of the point for safety reasons and to avoid putting pressure on the dog, possibly causing it to break point. I have found that carrying muzzle up at port arms results in mounting the gun with the muzzle moving down, exactly opposite to the direction the birds are flying. Carrying muzzle pointed down is safe (no concrete pads where I bird hunt) and allows a faster, more intuitive mount on rising birds. YMMV.

Nobody I have hunted with carries their shotgun pointed vertically over miles of terrain.

Quail hunting (and bird hunting in general) can be dangerous, but the danger is mainly from lack of muzzle control at the flush of a covey. Pick your hunting partners with care.

 

[Altitude sickness]

One benefit I like with exposed hammers is the ability for everyone to see what condition I’m carrying it in. Cocked or uncocked.

 

[Daisy]

I hunt a lot of quail, and I have never been asked to walk up to a covey with an open gun. Were a guide to require that, I would find another guide. Likewise, I am not going the walk about dangerous game country with an unloaded double. I should note that I have never been asked to that either.

There are basically two types of safeties employed in doubles. I'll come back to the K-Gun in a moment. Trigger blocking safeties are the cheapest for the gun manufacturer and least "safe." They do exactly what the name implies. They can not prevent a hammer slipping from a sear and falling due to a dropped firearm or something similar.

Intercepting safeties, intercept the sear preventing the fall of the hammer under almost any conceivable condition when engaged. Such safeties are easy to spot on most boxlocks by the small pin (screw) on either side of the upper edge of the action fence.

As @1peggy correctly notes, the cocking slide on a S2, R8, and K-Gun is, with just a bit of practice, is about as easy to manipulate as any other gun while bringing the rifle to the shoulder.

What really puzzles me is why anyone would carry a rifle differently in Africa than he does in North America or Europe. That vast majority of us use slings and we have trained ourselves well to be very careful managing our rifles while using one. Why on earth change to go follow a cape buffalo? I frankly think the African carry is more about looking the part than any practical value. In Africa I carry my S2 just like I carry my R8 Muzzle down over the left shoulder - left hand on the forearm. It comes up instantly and is always out of the way of brush. A rather well respected PH by the name of Len Taylor uses the same carry.

So I’m with you. Never seen that and I’ve hunted quail 100’s of times.

That said, I know of two people hit with shot bird hunting (never on my hunts). It happens. There is some danger to it imo.