My favourite bit of shooting kit – by Tim Bonner
Tim Bonner, Chief Executive of the Countryside Alliance, is very attached to his inherited shotgun.
![Cogswell & Harrison shotgun](https://www.shootinguk.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Tim-Bonners-Cogswell-Harrison-shotgun-.jpg)
Tim Bonner's favourite bit of kit was inherited from his great-aunt - a Cogswell & Harrison boxlock ejector
Tim chose his Cogswell & Harrison boxlock ejector, with 27 ½inch barrels, 2½ inch chambers – and weight 5¾lb.
He explained: “My great-aunt Nancy Metcalfe-Gibson, a legendary sporting lady from Westmoreland, gave it to me when I was 15, over 30 years ago. She had inherited it from her mother, my great-grandmother. I am not sure if she was the original owner but the serial number suggests it was built in 1904.
“I don’t believe a better roughshooting gun has ever been made. I have shot everything from ptarmigan in Sutherland to snipe in Cornwall with it. But it is as a woodcock gun that she really excels with incredibly fast handling and loaded with 7/8ths of an ounce (25g). Just this season we had four woodcock with five shots in one of my favourite coverts on the edge of a West Wales estuary and, as far as I’m concerned, shooting does not get much better than that.
![Tim Bonner](https://keyassets.timeincuk.net/inspirewp/live/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2017/02/Tim-Bonner-with-Cogswell-.jpg)
Tim Bonner, Chief Executive of the Countryside Alliance, with his beloved Cogswell & Harrison
Irreplaceable
“I am not sure it is replaceable. Certainly there are lightweight guns capable of doing a similar job, although finding something as light and shootable would be a challenge, but no other gun would have been used for over 100 years by my family.
“Its value to me is huge, but in the market I would have thought it was negligible. Roughshooting is an increasingly niche activity and side-by-sides are not exactly fashionable. On top of that she bears the marks of a properly used gun: a cracked stock held together by a lengthened top strap, a fore-end worn smooth with use, and barrels scratched from a fall on a Highland scree and thinned with use. Value is irrelevant anyway, I am more likely to sell a child than the Cogswell!”
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