ORIGINAL: whelen36
i've heard of a 8 guage shotgun , it's an older guage and was for some reason banned , does anybody have any info on the 8 guage and the guns it was in , some historical info would be good too
does anybody have any pics of the shotshell , or some comparison pics with it and other guage shells.
P.S. , why was it banned ???
The 8 ga.,the 6, 4, and 2-ga., were all banned in order to give the poor ducks and geese a chance to recover from the butchery of the 19th Century market hunters who damn near wiped out everyduck & goose in North America! (Just like they did the buffalo.)
To give you some idea if the size of an 8-ga., keep in mind that a pure lead ball the size of the bore weighs 1/8 of a pound, or 875 grains!!
There were also 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, and 2-bore RIFLES built to shoot dangerous game, and each of these usedthe number of round balls the diameter of the bore required to weigh a pound. Ie., the 4-ga shot 1/4-pound balls (1750 grains), the 2-ga shot half-pound (3500-grain!!) balls, the 6-ga., 1/6 pound balls, etc.
All of these ponderous gauge guns had to be a lot of fun to shoot(!!), plus you'd need to travel on a horse to move the bigger onesfrom one place to the next. No wonder the old African hunters
all had gun bearers!!