Mobile Register

July 10, 1861

Page 2

BEST MODE OF LOADING A SHOT GUN—Capt. L. M. Burfoot, of Chesterfield Mounted Rangers, Virginia, gives the following directions about loading double barreled shot guns to such of his companions as cannot obtain rifles. The experiment is worth trying here also:

Now I desire that each man who intends to rely on the double barreled gun will follow my directions, and I will insure that a “steady arm” will tell at eighty or ninety yards every fire. Carry your gun with you to the place where you intend to buy your shot; get a cut wad, drive it down the barrel of the gun a quarter of an inch, level and smooth. Now take the shot and put three on the wad; if they fill the bore of the gun well, snug and smooth, without any loose space, they will do. You will thus find that three shots can fill the circle of the bore of the gun, so can four; after four, the next number to fill the circle is seven; to shoot men with, these last will be too small; therefore buy only such shot as will, on careful trial in the gun itself, lay in tiers of either three or four.

I prefer, for any gun, tiers of three; and in loading the double gun to meet an enemy, put in a very full charge of powder, and only two tiers of shot, so that they will lie snug and close in the gun, and the six shots will be operated on equally by the expansive force of the powder and will be projected from the muzzle of the gun almost in a solid lump, and will remain within six or eight inches of one another in a flight of seventy or eighty yards. With only two tiers of shot, almost any quantity of powder may be put under them without risk to the gun.

[Transcribed by Sharon Strout]