The Countryman: a lifelong love affair with guns, from a toy rifle to a Schultz & Larsen

I have always liked guns; in fact, I genuinely can’t remember a time when I didn’t like guns. My first and favourite toy gun was made by my late father. The stock was fashioned from a planed pine plank, the trigger was a bent nail, the trigger guard was a U-shaped pipe clamp and the barrel was a copper pipe. However, the best feature was the bolt – a screwed-on sliding bolt from a garden gate – and I simply loved cycling it after each imaginary shot.

That rifle served me well until I watched the film D-Day the Sixth of June and from that point some serious rifle-smithing was needed. My father was tasked with turning my rifle into a Sten gun. The barrel was shortened and a wooden magazine was horizontally fixed to the side of the stock via a mortise and tenon joint – voilà. I immediately earned the promotion to become a special forces commando – defender of my own back yard.

Airguns, Crosman pump guns and a gun-cat

By the age of seven I was old enough for a real gun (well, it was the 1970s) and for Christmas that year I received a Slavia .177 break-barrel air rifle – I was overjoyed! Over the next five years my shooting apprenticeship went through a steep learning curve. Growing up in a small Suffolk village with a brother and half a dozen other boys of similar ages, we bought, swapped and borrowed various airguns.

BSA Meteors did the rounds and an ungainly Relum Tornado underlever caused a few minor accidents due to its hair trigger, but the stars of our airgunning show were our Crosmans – the 760 Pumpmaster and the 766 American Classic. The Sussex Armoury catalogue was crammed full with the stuff of boys’ dreams and when Dad decided to buy us a couple of Crosman ‘pump guns’ we were as proud as punch.

It was at this point that I realised that we owned a family ‘gun-cat’. Sandy, our big ginger tabby, born in the barn on the farm next door, always took a keen interest in our airgunning exploits, in the hope of an easy meal. When Sandy heard the rifles being pumped – often 10 pumps for each shot – he would find us and stay quietly ‘at heel’ until the shot was fired. In the event of a successful shot, Sandy would retrieve the bird to our feet – then promptly devour it.

A love of nature as well as guns

It is worth explaining that, for a bunch of village lads like us, our love of guns and shooting was equalled, not only by our love of rods, reels and fishing, but also by our love of nature. Having knowledge of the natural world around us was something of a given and woe betide anyone who couldn’t name any bird in the sky or any mammal below – get it wrong and a serious ribbing was the order of the day, all day. We naturally understood the seasons; we knew every crop in the fields and every tree in the woods – it was just the way it was.

My teens were my shotgunning years. Rabbit and pigeon shooting were readily accessible and, funded by my various jobs done during the school holidays (and maybe some school days too), I shot my way through numerous makes, models and bores. My armoury included a Pedretti folding single, a Gunmark Kestrel side-by-side, a Baikal over-and-under combination with 26in and 28in barrels, a Beretta 301 semi-auto and an unusual Hungarian FEG over-and-under with a single selective trigger whose functionality was, indeed, very selective.

A first centrefire: the Parker-Hale .270

I bought my first centrefire rifle in my mid-twenties, during the mid-1990s. It was a Parker-Hale 1100 Deluxe, chambered in .270 Win with a Santa Barbara Mauser action. It’s funny, the Mauser ’98 action is reputed to be the most reliable cartridge feeding and extracting design of all time, yet my particular rifle struggled loading when it had three cartridges in the floor-plate magazine – the only way to ensure reliable feeding was to load it with only two. But that didn’t matter – I loved that rifle.

Back then, the transition from small game to big game felt like a giant leap. I’d rarely seen a deer before I started stalking them and, in the absence of the internet, we had only books to guide us. By the 1990s deer were revered and European customs were emulated. Taking one’s first deer was a big deal. I was super fortunate in that my first deer was a bronze-medal roebuck and it was as if the rifle that grassed it bestowed the powers of Excalibur. I was truly foolish to have sold the .270 Parker-Hale, but we live and learn.

Despite Parker-Hales being as cheap as chips, many, including mine, had the deepest lustre in the barrel bluing, rarely seen today. I also liked its Monte Carlo-style stock; mine had a lovely gloss finish and was reminiscent of a Weatherby Mark V Deluxe. It had a slim fore-end that felt nice in the hand and handled nicely, despite being a bit jumpy each time that .270 bullet left its unmoderated barrel. It is no coincidence that the latest rifle to grace my cabinet – my Schultz & Larsen Victory – resembles my old Parker-Hale and when carrying it through the woodlands I am transformed back to my youth.

Why a love of guns is nothing to be ashamed of

Today, functionality is the key feature in sporting rifle design and accuracy has to be the primary objective, but weight and barrel length must come a close second – no point having a supremely accurate rifle if you cannot carry and manoeuvre it. However, perhaps some guns serve a different purpose – the purpose of bringing pleasure and putting a smile on one’s face.

Like those classic cars and motorcycles that take to our roads on sunny Sundays, there is no shame in the desire to take to the woods with a rifle that might not be the most accurate in the cabinet but that – for whatever reason – it simply brings you joy.

Yes, I have always, unapologetically, had a love of guns – and it is nothing to be ashamed of. Beautiful feats of engineering crafted from wood and steel are no less works of art than any painting or sculpture. Even modern guns that are a skilfully crafted union of carbon-fibre, aluminium, stainless steel and titanium can still be a joy to behold and high-grade laminated stocks probably offer the best of both worlds, possessing both the warmth and splendour of wood and the rigidity and stability of composite materials. For both young and old, the gun holds a special place in our hearts and long may it continue to do so.

Keith Edmunds is a keen stalker who aims to ensure that fieldsports remain relevant and respected.