Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Why no 16 guage?

Yeah, it's a shame how the 16 ga. has kind of fallen by the wayside. Back in the 50's and 60's there was a lot of pheasant hunting going on in western NY state. 16 gauge guns were seen in large numbers. I've also seen deer taken cleanly with 16's, ( but also with 20's). In the early 1940's when my dad was in high school he pheasant hunted with a full choke 16 ga. Iver Johnson Champion. Nothing wrong with the 16; I still have one. Guess it's true that the 16 kind of got squeezed out between the 12's and the 3 inch 20's. Maybe someday we'll see a 16 ga. comeback like we have seen with other old gauges and calibers of the firearms world.

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Could a good gunsmith/welder fit a 16 gauge barrel on a left-hand Remington 1100 or 870 ?

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My first gun was a 16ga. pump. The 2 3/4 dram, 1 1/8oz. load with the proper shot size can do most anything that needs to be done. If the gun is on a 20ga frame the 16ga makes more sense if the right loads are available.

Maybe the 16 needs to be "reintroduced" as the 16 ShortGaugeMagnum.

I've handled a couple of the Browning BPS and they are mighty tempting.

I use a 16 ga.Mdl 37 winchester sometimes .its a great gun.

Why no 16? Well, Im no gunwriter but I read once....

Before WWI the standards for the 12 where 2-5/8 @ 1-1/8 oz.

16 was 2-9/16 @ 1oz but 1-1/8 oz of shot was available

20 was 2-1/2 @ just 7/8oz

at the beginning of WWII the 2-3/4 shell was standard

the 12 moved up to 1-1/4oz of shot

the 16 stayed at 1-1/8(same as the old 12)

and the 20 got a full 1 oz. Winchester had begun to experiment with the 3" 20.

Before WWII the 16 was built on its own size frame, smaller than the 12guage.
so the 16 "carried like a 20(smaller frame) and shot like a 12(like the old short 12)"


Post war gunmakers saw a increase in the 20ga and declining sales of the 16. To save money they started slapping 16 barrels on 12 frames. 12 and 20ga got a larger 3" load so the 16 started carrying like a 12 but hit no harder than the 20.


The above is paraphrased from an article by Larry Brown in feb/march wing&shot mag from 1999.

It sent me in search of my first 16ga double, a nitro special, one of the last American doubles to be made on a 16 ga frame IIRC. That led to a AHFox that still goes out every year for grouse.

Google the 16ga society and you will find a bunch of loonies who love the "Queen of the uplands", along with links to gun manufactures and currently available ammo.

Around here you have to order it or catch it the one time per year some of the stores carry it, usually right before dove season.

Mike

I keep ogling a 16 ga Damascus job at one local dealer. Nice shape, definitely shootable, reasonably priced but I may have to think about actually setting up to reload shotshells to feed it

polywad has low pressure 16ga loads for the old ones that are still shootable, Little spendy but your probably not going to shoot a flat a day out of the old girl.

http://www.polywad.com/vintager.html

Gun shop near me usually has a few boxes of 16 in stock.

My Winnie Model 12 Circa 1914 loves #8 shot at turkey shoots. Tears the center out of the target.

I have about 4 boxes put away. Should get more

I grew up with an inexpensive Stevens 16 ga double with double triggers. I liked it because it was smaller in my hand across the base of barrels, and with a recoil pad didn't kick much. It was a great rabbit and dove gun.
The manufacturers killed off 16 ga. by not coming out with 3" chambers for them, and not manufacturing it even when some folks liked them.

The same game is in progress now with the 7 mm WSM.

I'm totally new to the 16. Have some old paper shells somewhere from when Dad had one many years back.

Where do I go hull wise, I need to lay in a stock of them and some wads, the rest is easy... but I see that in the future I'll probably have to load for the gun generally speaking.

Thanks, Jeff

Well Rost it's like this: Federal hulls are readily available in loaded ammo. I like them for reloading alot. They have a paper basewad that needs to be inspected every loading. Fiocchi and Cheddite hulls are available new, empty and primed from Ballistic Products, either one works fine but the Fiocchi's have a slightly larger primer pocket that can get loose with all but Fiocchi primers which are slightly larger than std. 209 primers.
Wads are now common. Claybuster makes a AA16 clone that's best for the Remington black hulls which are the only taper walled hulls anymore. They are also least likely to take many reloads. Gulandi wads- the SG16 and the B&P Z16 are available at BPI. Downrange Mfg. makes a great if pricey wad for 1 oz and less the DR16. Remington still makes the SP16 for 1 1/8 and 1 1/4 oz loads.

Federal makes some nice normal 1 oz and 1 1/8 oz loads for the 16 in 8, 7.5, 6 and 4 shot IIRC. Fiocchi makes 1 oz 8's and 7.5's they have a line called "golden pheasant" that has 6,5, and 4 shot available. Winchester load 1 and 1 1/8 oz loads in 8, 7.5, 6 and 4 (loaded in Cheddite hulls). Kent has tungsten matrix non tox, Bismuth shot co. has bismuth non tox, Federal should still load some 15/16 oz steel. B&P loads some 7/8ths, 1 oz and 1 1/16 oz stuff that is excellent. Kent has 2.5" stuff as does polywad.

16ga shotshells aren't hard to find if you look. Internet mail order is the way to go. It is a bit more pricey and it's not as easy as just dropping them in the cart all wally world most of the time.

Planmech gave you a great reply.

Don't try to make the 16 into a 12-one ounce loads work great-and have fun. As he said mail order may be a little more expensive, but how many do you need, unless reloading makes you happy?

B&P will send them by the flat directly to your home and they make one of the best shells on the market.

I think not having a seperate Skeet class killed the 16 more than a 3inch 20.My 16ga. Win 21 & Fox Sterlingworth are my favorite New England Grouse guns.

Thanks battue, when you feed 4 16's you have to know where to get the stuff!

A good 1 1/8 oz load,say a Federal hull, SP16, 30.0 blue dot, W209 and 1 1/8 oz of good hard shot- say STS or West Coast magnum in #5 can be made for 1/2 the cost of Fiocchi Golden Pheasant and the shot is better while being lower pressure for superior patterns. It's an awesome 2nd barrel late season pheasant load. Usually I hunt with 7/8ths and 1 oz loads in my 16's. Unless I'm packing the 5lb 14oz 28 gauge!

Reloading makes the 16 shine, you can use premium shot and get better loads for half the cost of off the shelf stuff.

I'm really enjoying this thread.Thanks guys.

Thanks for the info. More than I'd bargained for.

The 16 will be only a dove gun for me, and as such, 1 or even 1 and 1/8 oz loads would be max. Its not a duck etc... gun.

Tis an old A5 like what dad had until he had to sell it and as such it will see sentimental use. Though I did manage to take a few grouse and such in AK with it one fall...

Thanks, Jeff

I grew up using a 16 gauge Ithaca 37. Killed my first deer with it. Also a lot of ducks and upland. As a kid I never realized that you really needed more than just a modified choke 16 gauge pump to do everything. Today the old Ithaca pump is joined in the safe by three 16 gauge doubles, a Fox Sterlingworth, a Merkel 1620 and an old "hardware store" brand. I use 12's for turkey and waterfowl but the 16's for everything upland. I've always felt that a (properly scaled) 16 gauge gun was somehow a nicer fit to an adult male than any other gauge gun.

I think that the late 50's early 60's cult of the all around gun did as much as anything to hurt the 16's popularity. I would expect some sort of resurgence today, now that the pendulum has swung way back toward specialization.

Jeff that 1 1/8oz load work very, very well in an A5, it is a heavy and you have to swap friction ring arrangement. I killed a few thousand pheasants with that load and a 1988 mfg Sweet 16 A5. That load isn't too hard recoiling from a 6lb 4 oz Rizzini O/U either.

Green dot and Unique make great 7/8ths loads, Unique and Solo 1250 make great 1 ounce loads.

cra1948, the 16 is popular again. There are some new 870's and 1100's out there, Citoris are run every few years, all the Spanish and Italian makers make them.

I recommend Johnny B's 16-gauge article in the recent Guns magazine. I have no dog in the hunt, but it was good reading (as usual). JB has now done justice in print to both the 16 & 28.

An ardent Pennsylvania cottontail chaser I knew was a fan of the 16 in an Ithaca pump. His shells were purple-hulled as I recall.