Guns, Guns, Guns
Good evening, Uncle Peter. Am I interrupting your TV viewing?
The TV's on but I don’t pay much attention. I’ve had such a good feed. I’m ready to talk. Go for it, boy.
Well, 'once upon a time' you told me how my father, when he was 17, won the NZ Army Cadet Rifle Championship in 1930. You gave me a photo of him with his trophy belts. I’ve discovered that winning a shooting championship runs in the family. Did you know your great-grandfather, Edward Leyland, was a champion shooter? He won a competition long before you boys were born?
Tell me more!
Better than that — I can read you the original newspaper article from 19th March 1885. I found it on the internet, Paperspast. I’ve got it in front of me.
From an old newspaper? Where exactly did this take place?
At West Clive, between Hastings and Napier. Are you ready? Listen to this.
Peter, your great-grandfather Edward scored 13 out of 14. The best of his 29 opponents was Langley who scored 12 out of 14. Edward won 15 sovereigns and a cup. What do you make of that?
Very interesting. I remember old Aunty Florrie used to say, ‘Guns, guns, guns! You three boys, you’ve got shooting in your blood – all mad on shooting.’
Of course, I’ve always been keen on guns — rifles — shotguns. We had guns when we were kids.
My father had a cartage business when we were young, with contracts all around Palmerston North, and as he travelled around the town and district delivering goods, he met lots of people. He told me there were some old ladies he met once, they baled him up. And these old girls took it on themselves to reprimand him — to tell him off — give him a piece of their mind.
‘Mr. Leyland, you’ve no right to give that boy of yours a gun and let him wander off on his pushbike and go hunting rabbits.’
Dad replied, “Would you rather have him stay around town and get into trouble, or take a pea-rifle off into the country and do some good?”
What’s a pea-rifle? Is it a kind of air-gun — a BB gun?
No, No. Much more powerful than a slug-gun. It’s a proper small calibre rifle, a .22 — used cartridges and bullets. The ammo was quite cheap. 50 in a pack. Cost us a shilling. No problem buying it. You paid your bob and got your box.
Did you buy it yourselves — when you were kids?
It was usually no problem, but if we couldn’t get served, Dad would buy them and hand them over. Of course we weren’t little kids, we were at least ten when we used the pea rifle! As I said, 'pea rifles' were proper rifles –– .22 calibre, and there were all different makes, Remington, Winchester, BSA, but I don't remember which make we had. They were commonplace. Everybody had one, and they were cheap, too.
And there were different types. We had a single-shot, bolt action. But there were more expensive types, and I got one later –– a pump action. You could load a lot of bullets into the magazine and pump them out fast.
Did you have telescopic sights?
No, they were far too expensive in those days –– big money –– out of reach. There were two other systems we could use. First was the simple sight –– the old 'army sight' – it had a foresight that stuck up above the front end of the barrel, and a backsight that had a notch in it. That was the basic sight. But we preferred the aperture sight. We were keen on that one. It had the same foresight, but at the back of the rifle, near the bolt, there was a metal circle to aim through. Now, the good thing about this sight was that you could adjust the backsight. It had a mechanism for shifting it right or left, up or down, and so you could set it to allow for the range and the wind.
There was a rabbit problem at the time. Rabbits were taking over New Zealand. Real pests they were. I’ve actually seen it, with my own eyes. I remember when Mother took us to visit her home on the Wischnowsky farm, out the back of Halcombe. It was hill country back there — grazing land — and the grass was short because there was lots of stock AND there was a plague of rabbits. One of the local lads took me for a walk to show me, and I saw the whole hillside moving. A ‘wave of rabbits’! There were burrows and tunnels everywhere. The farmers hated the sight of them.
Those rabbits were good eating too. Very good eating. We’d shoot ‘em, skin them, gut them, and deliver them home to old Aunt Florrie. She’d do whatever she did with rabbit. Fling them in the pot and stew them up with vegetables. Good protein, and no fat in it at all. Very easy to handle and eat.
Some people tried to make a market out of the skins. There were people called furriers, they handled them, but we seldom sold to those people. We were just boys, and not much interested in selling. We just wanted to shoot — rabbits, quail and pheasants. But I do remember the skins hung out to dry. You’d see them strung up on lines, posts, and along fences. The skinners would make big U-shaped staples out of number 8 fencing wire, and use the legs of the staple to hold the skin out open so it would dry. You had to clean and dry the skins in order to sell them. The furriers didn’t want any fat or meat left on the skin.
As we got older we graduated to more serious guns. Shot-guns. They were more expensive — almost a rich-man’s gun — but I had one. And heavier bore rifles, 303s, later in life. Even after I married, I joined the gun club. It was started by a group of local ‘gentleman’, many of them professional people, and we met out on a farm for our shoots. We’d shoot at clay birds. I had a go at that, and did okay, but I wouldn’t say I was brilliant at it. I even remember one of the advertisements in the paper. It was a graphic kind of set-up.
‘C.A.C.’ it said. ‘C.A.C. The Colonial Ammunition Company’.
They were an Auckland business, and had an arrangement set up called a shot tower, and they somehow contrived to get molten lead — from melting down old drain-pipes I guess — they’d get this melted lead up to the top of the shot tower and drop it through some sieve-like arrangement. As it fell it would be influenced by the natural laws, and would cool down and form blobs. They could adjust the sizes. Well, they made this shot to put in their cartridges, and everyone bought them. They advertised quite a bit. Getting back to that advertisement, quite memorable it was, there were the letters ‘C.A.C’ all made up of a formation of ducks, all flying past, spelling out the ammunition used to hunt them down. I remember it well.
Sometimes the club would have a live bird shoot, like the one old Edward triumphed at. But whether it was live birds or clay pigeons, you needed to have your wits about you. They could come out of the traps left, right or centre, and they might fly high or low. Rabbits, on the other hand, would sometimes just stand still, as if saying ‘Shoot me, please.’ We didn’t waste ammo. It cost a bob a packet.
Very interesting. I remember old Aunty Florrie used to say, ‘Guns, guns, guns! You three boys, you’ve got shooting in your blood – all mad on shooting.’
Of course, I’ve always been keen on guns — rifles — shotguns. We had guns when we were kids.
My father had a cartage business when we were young, with contracts all around Palmerston North, and as he travelled around the town and district delivering goods, he met lots of people. He told me there were some old ladies he met once, they baled him up. And these old girls took it on themselves to reprimand him — to tell him off — give him a piece of their mind.
‘Mr. Leyland, you’ve no right to give that boy of yours a gun and let him wander off on his pushbike and go hunting rabbits.’
Dad replied, “Would you rather have him stay around town and get into trouble, or take a pea-rifle off into the country and do some good?”
What’s a pea-rifle? Is it a kind of air-gun — a BB gun?
No, No. Much more powerful than a slug-gun. It’s a proper small calibre rifle, a .22 — used cartridges and bullets. The ammo was quite cheap. 50 in a pack. Cost us a shilling. No problem buying it. You paid your bob and got your box.
Did you buy it yourselves — when you were kids?
It was usually no problem, but if we couldn’t get served, Dad would buy them and hand them over. Of course we weren’t little kids, we were at least ten when we used the pea rifle! As I said, 'pea rifles' were proper rifles –– .22 calibre, and there were all different makes, Remington, Winchester, BSA, but I don't remember which make we had. They were commonplace. Everybody had one, and they were cheap, too.
And there were different types. We had a single-shot, bolt action. But there were more expensive types, and I got one later –– a pump action. You could load a lot of bullets into the magazine and pump them out fast.
Did you have telescopic sights?
No, they were far too expensive in those days –– big money –– out of reach. There were two other systems we could use. First was the simple sight –– the old 'army sight' – it had a foresight that stuck up above the front end of the barrel, and a backsight that had a notch in it. That was the basic sight. But we preferred the aperture sight. We were keen on that one. It had the same foresight, but at the back of the rifle, near the bolt, there was a metal circle to aim through. Now, the good thing about this sight was that you could adjust the backsight. It had a mechanism for shifting it right or left, up or down, and so you could set it to allow for the range and the wind.
There was a rabbit problem at the time. Rabbits were taking over New Zealand. Real pests they were. I’ve actually seen it, with my own eyes. I remember when Mother took us to visit her home on the Wischnowsky farm, out the back of Halcombe. It was hill country back there — grazing land — and the grass was short because there was lots of stock AND there was a plague of rabbits. One of the local lads took me for a walk to show me, and I saw the whole hillside moving. A ‘wave of rabbits’! There were burrows and tunnels everywhere. The farmers hated the sight of them.
Those rabbits were good eating too. Very good eating. We’d shoot ‘em, skin them, gut them, and deliver them home to old Aunt Florrie. She’d do whatever she did with rabbit. Fling them in the pot and stew them up with vegetables. Good protein, and no fat in it at all. Very easy to handle and eat.
Some people tried to make a market out of the skins. There were people called furriers, they handled them, but we seldom sold to those people. We were just boys, and not much interested in selling. We just wanted to shoot — rabbits, quail and pheasants. But I do remember the skins hung out to dry. You’d see them strung up on lines, posts, and along fences. The skinners would make big U-shaped staples out of number 8 fencing wire, and use the legs of the staple to hold the skin out open so it would dry. You had to clean and dry the skins in order to sell them. The furriers didn’t want any fat or meat left on the skin.
As we got older we graduated to more serious guns. Shot-guns. They were more expensive — almost a rich-man’s gun — but I had one. And heavier bore rifles, 303s, later in life. Even after I married, I joined the gun club. It was started by a group of local ‘gentleman’, many of them professional people, and we met out on a farm for our shoots. We’d shoot at clay birds. I had a go at that, and did okay, but I wouldn’t say I was brilliant at it. I even remember one of the advertisements in the paper. It was a graphic kind of set-up.
‘C.A.C.’ it said. ‘C.A.C. The Colonial Ammunition Company’.
They were an Auckland business, and had an arrangement set up called a shot tower, and they somehow contrived to get molten lead — from melting down old drain-pipes I guess — they’d get this melted lead up to the top of the shot tower and drop it through some sieve-like arrangement. As it fell it would be influenced by the natural laws, and would cool down and form blobs. They could adjust the sizes. Well, they made this shot to put in their cartridges, and everyone bought them. They advertised quite a bit. Getting back to that advertisement, quite memorable it was, there were the letters ‘C.A.C’ all made up of a formation of ducks, all flying past, spelling out the ammunition used to hunt them down. I remember it well.
Sometimes the club would have a live bird shoot, like the one old Edward triumphed at. But whether it was live birds or clay pigeons, you needed to have your wits about you. They could come out of the traps left, right or centre, and they might fly high or low. Rabbits, on the other hand, would sometimes just stand still, as if saying ‘Shoot me, please.’ We didn’t waste ammo. It cost a bob a packet.