Who still shoots an 8 Ga. shotgun ??

Nevada Ed

Nevada Ed

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This round was outlawed back in 1912-18 (?) for the use of hunting waterfowl

however I saw a gun show on tv, that stated that Remington was still loading this ammo.

Does anyone know who in the US is still using this large bore, or
is the ammo ment for over seas, shooters?

I know the 10 Ga. is alive and well but thought the 8 Ga. was long gone and just a wall hanger.
 
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Back when I guided waterfowl hunters in Maryland I had one hunter who brought an 8. He kilt his 3 geese and a pair of Mallards with it. I didn't realize it was a 8 till almost lunch time. It surely wasn't overwhelming on the birds. I have an old friend near Cody who was also from Maryland who owned and shot waterfowl with an 8 gauge Parker gun. Pretty but fairly heavy. Except for a couple of Win M-21s and an early Ithaca or two I am not a fan of SxSs...definitely no 8s. I did shoot Ithaca and Remington Mag 10s though. I also knew an old fellow back in the 60's who had and used a Punt Gun shooting about 4-6 ounces of shot. That ol guy could sure scull a skiff too
 
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I have shot a 10ga in my younger days but can't a imagine shooting an 8ga, especially today.
 
The 8 ga was never a ga used by most sportsmen(women). It was a niche gun back in the commercial gunner's days. It wasn't esp all that powerful carrying IIRC about 2 ounces of shot. The 10 ga at the time was 2 7/8 inches and shot 1 5/8 ounes. the Super 10 was brought out approx in the 30s with 1 7/8-2 ounces...

Have to add the original 3 in 12 ga came out with 1 3/8 ounces....an eighth of an ounce more than the heavy 2 3/4 inch 12...and to be honest it was as much a marketing ploy at the time as much stuff is now days. Mo money mo money!
 
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Every year at the Great Northern sxs shoot in Medford WI they have the 8 ga world championship. Just bragging rights. Whoever shoots the best 5 stand score wins. Once you get one swinging they are hard to stop.
 
An 8 Gauge shell (second from the right) isn’t that much bigger than a 3-1/2” 10 Gauge. A 4 Gauge (far right) is another story. You probably wouldn’t want to shoot one of those from the shoulder! :eek:

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That 5 stand 8ga event in Medford is fun.....to watch. I've shot a Parker 8ga and it's not as bad as you might think. IIRC the barrels were 36 inches long and the gun weighed about 15 lbs. The only 8's available that I have seen are older SXS's. The are still legal for waterfowl across the pond.
 
DWalt said:
The only 8 ga loads I know of are for cement kiln clinker guns.
Click to expand...

For 12 years I worked in a factory that made porcelain insulators for power transmission.
We once used a 30-30 to clear a piece of ware that fell into the tracks in the kiln. The kiln was about a block long.
The ware racks ran on tracks like railroad tracks. The racks were built by stacking. If a rack collapsed, the whole kiln had to be shut down and cooled, which was a major, major operation.
One day a piece of ware fell off a rack and landed on the tracks. They stopped the haulage system to decide what to do. Old Bob, (his son Bobby worked there too) went out to his truck and got his 30-30. He blasted the piece of ware out of the track and they turned the haulage system back on and continued running porcelain through the kiln.

This is a good thread.
 
The industrial 8ga hulls can be used to reload into 'sporting' rounds for an 8ga single or SxS.
The industrial rounds do have a belt around the base much like a belted magnum CF rifle round.
That is so the industrial kiln rounds can't be chambered in a sporting arm and fired which would bring disasterous results.

Mosre than a few orig sporting arms in 8ga have had their chambers altered by cutting a recess in the chamber to allow the use of the 8ga industrial hull.
It's considered a real sin to do that alteration. But many a Parker, LCS and foreign made SxS's show the operation.

I repaired a W&C Scott high grade 8ga SxS a few yrs back that had that chamber alteration done on it some time in it's life.

What most dedicated vintage SxS shooters/reloadeds do now is make or purchase a swage die set that you run the industrial hulls into. It swages down that extra ring at the base of the hull and makes them straight walled so they can easily be used in unaltered guns.

The Forum Admin over on the AH Fox forum is into the 8ga SxS of late. I understand he got a maker of the industrial 8ga hulls to make a run of them (empty/unprimed) w/o that ring.
He shoots a Parker 8ga that I know of.

They had an 8ga event at the NorthEastern SxS event in PA last year.
Probably will follow through again this June.

Interesting guns and gauge for sure.
The big bore stuff always draws attention
Never owned an 8ga.
10ga Ithaca NID Magnum SxS was my big bore vintage shotgun for a time.
 
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Who still shoots an 8 Ga. shotgun ??/B]

Elmer does, and it's not all that on a duck.

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEr0EAcSWcc[/ame]
 
An 8ga was also featured by the actor that played the accountant with James Garner who played Texas Ranger Woodrow Call in The Streets of Larado
 
The 8gauge industrial ammo comes in different projectiles for different uses.The Winchester 8g magnum in picture is loaded with a zinc slug. This was to tap pots in alloy mills. Pot had a tap hole that was plugged with a ceramic cement. When ready to tap pot would be glowing red, except for that dark spot that was the. Plug. Guns were mounted with splatter shields, not shoulder fired.
If you notice the 8g brass has a band just like a magnum rifle cartridge. This is to keep idiots from putting these in the old Damascus 8s. I wouldn’t want to be around when they touched it off. 12g slug is for scale.
Most of the guns used to scale boilers and such are 12g and shoulder fired. 8g is not portable or flexible enough for that work.
You can shoot 8g all day long with no I’ll effects. I once shot over 100 8g at junk in plant yard. I also fired a couple boxes of 12g slugs at clinkers in boilers, from inspection doors. Brutal, from the position you have to shoot from. Those guns were WINCHESTER M37industrial singles.
 

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