Yeah, that was me, a little kid sneaking around in the sagberush trying to kill big hoppers with his Red Ryder. Can't remember ever getting much more excited than when I actually killed my first one. Also used to stuff wads of Kleenex down the barrel, then a little sand, to try to wingshoot flies. That worked OK too at close range.
I do own several handguns, including my dad's Colt Frontier Scout (the scaled-down .22 rimfire version of the Peacemaker), a super-accurate, heavy-barreled Ruger Mark II, a T/C Contender with several barrels from .32/20 up to .373 JDJ and .41 Magnum, an S&W Model 66 with Crimson Trace's neat laser-grips, and a 7.5" Ruger Blackhawk Bisley in .45 Colt. Probably have forgotten a few in there but you get the idea.
I can even shoot them pretty well. Have killed much small game, both birds and bunnies, with the .22's, coyotes with the 66, and (aside from deer) killed a prairie dog at 94 yards with the Bisley a couple of years ago.
But have written very little about all that because editors tend to put their writers into specialty niches. Wolfe has Brian Pearce and Mike Venturino to write about handguns, so I don't even bother proposing an article anymore.
And yes, Brian does own a shotgun, actually a bunch of very nice ones. One of our more enjoyable conversations took place at the very shoot where I .45'd that unlucky prairie dog. Brian and I and my wife had a nice, long conversation about fine side-by-sides. He owns a Westley Richards, among others, if I remember correctly. But he does not get to write about scatterguns much because others are assigned that job, including me.
Back in the 1970's, when I broke into this business, most hunting and gun writers were expected to be much more versatile. I wrote not only about big game and upland birds for FIELD & STREAM, but many kinds of fishing as well. But by the time I resigned as a staffer from that magazine a few years ago (to write full-time for Wolfe) I was pretty well pigeon-holed as "the deer guy."
