Another good use for a drilling is as a traveling gun if you do both big game and bird shooting. You can just take one gun and be ready for anything. For example last fall I was working in Europe for 3 months during the hunting season and I brought my drilling. So with only one compact break down rifle I went partridge and pheasant shooting over pointing dogs a couple of times, stalking red stag, and a driven hunt for boar and deer. Was it the "ideal gun" for each task? No, but it worked and made traveling much easier.

The sticky wicket with this is ammo availability if you loose your luggage or use up all your ammo. Especially with an odd or old metric caliber when you are traveling in the US. I've been lucky and never had that happen to me. For example a couple of years ago I took my drilling on an early fall hunt in Southeast Alaska for black tail deer and grouse/waterfowl. Had I lost my ammo finding 7x65r or even 16 bore shotgun ammo in Southeast Alaska would have been difficult. But the hunt went fine:
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[Linked Image]

[Linked Image]