Over the years writers, movie stars, and other famous folks have lent waterfowling considerable positive cache. Here is a short collection of celebrated “shootingest gentlemen” and their waterfowl-hunting shotguns of choice.
Nash Buckingham (1880-1971)
This noted Southern gentleman, outdoor writer and conservationist is best known for duck shooting with a 3-inch 12-gauge side-by-side, custom Super Fox, made for him by gunsmith Burt Becker. “Bo-Whoop,” Buckingham’s nickname for his fowling piece, is displayed at Ducks Unlimited’s national headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee.
Gary Cooper (1901-1961)
The star of *High Noon *and many other Hollywood feature films during the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, Cooper, a contemporary of Clark Gable, Robert Stack, Ernest Hemingway, and other period notables, was known as a crack rifle shot. When hunting waterfowl, however, “Coop” chose a 12-gauge Parker.
Clark Gable (1901-1960)
Accomplished skeet shooter and wingshot Gable often hunted with Ernest Hemingway in Sun Valley, Idaho, and occasionally with the late Jimmy Robinson, the longtime shotgun editor for Sports Afield magazine, on Manitoba’s Delta Marsh. Considered a superb sportsmen, Gable, like Cooper, shot a 12-gauge Parker when duck hunting. On the rare occasions he missed and the duck had gone with the wind, Gable was known to confess “Frankly, my friends, I don’t give a damn.”
Source
Famous Shotguns — Ron Spomer Outdoors is written by Ron Spomer for www.ronspomeroutdoors.com
