Maggie's Farm

Whatever happened to the 16 Gauge, anyway? When I was a kid there were plenty of people using them, but a few years later it seemed everybody had moved on to 12 Gauge. I used to use a Remington 16 Gauge auto that was Browning-designed -- it had that distinctive Browning hump at the back--but it got stolen from my Brother's house.

One of my Father's crustier old hunting buddies carried a 10 Gauge side-by-side, which sort of terrified me at the age when 20 Gauge almost kicked me over. I remember the shells he used were of black plastic, which seemed appropriate to the scariness.

I have one 16 Gauge capable gun at the moment. It started out as a rifle - a late 19th century Remington "Rolling Block" carbine, caliber gigantic, originally meant for black powder cartridges. I found it stuck far in the back of one of Grandma's closets, completely forgotten, and complete with one paper 16 Ga. shell. Apparently somebody away back in the family had bought it new for its rifle qualities, and then smokeless powder came into style, and then you couldn't buy the cartridges for the rifle anymore, and some subsequent owner figured out that a 16 Gauge shell would fit right in there, and they employed it as a single-shot backyard squirrel and pest blaster. My Grandfather would have been the last to use it -- I've never actually fired the thing and don't plan to, though I'm sure it would work fine; the rolling block breech is a strong and sturdy mechanism, and even though modern shells use smokeless, I doubt they generate more pressure than the original rifle cartridges did.