La Casa di Lecco has in its catalog a large series of hunting cartridges with specific solutions for every need: today we examine the one for the woodcock and for greater satisfaction we choose it in the 20/70 gauge.
di Emmanuel Tabasso
We do not think it is wrong to say that the woodcock is in the Italian hunting world like the university to other courses of study: leaving aside roosters, rinds and whites that are part of a world of their own, for everything else the scolopax rusticola goes straight to the hearts of smoothbore enthusiasts who still have real hunting in mind, on real game, in almost always difficult terrain and with auxiliaries also from universities, indeed from post-graduate specialization courses. The beautiful animal does not breed, does not launch itself and retains ancestral habits with passages linked to time and climate, with some references for the dates, but with the clarifications that go with the moon and meteorological events. The magic of putting one's nose out of the door in the evening to strologue if that blessed wind from the north will arrive, and with it the woodcocks, still has something ancestral, divinatory, shamanic even if many notions are now accessed with PDAs and other devilry that inform man by blunting the faculties handed down over time. However, even with modern aids to divine what will happen tomorrow, sniffing the time, perhaps in a small house on the hill, outside the town and far from the people, retains the charm of ancestral things, those that first move us to hunt.
Choose wisely
The choices to undermine the cunning woodcock arrived from the subarctic lands must be carried out with great attention and respect: from the area to be beaten to how to carry out the search, to get to the training that we have given to our auxiliary, everything contributes to raise the chances of success. . It will then be the double final element, the one that really leads to the result, that will require all our care: the shotgun and the cartridge are and remain the decisive function in the deadly moment of the fledging, when that characteristic pàpàpà follows an elegant stop of the dog. 
The three classic types of rifles share the options, but the side-by-side is like the dark ceremony dress: you are not mistaken and it is perfectly in tune with the occasion and the environment. The technical reasons are in the compactness, with the same length of barrels, compared to the semiautomatics, in the balance and in the visual plane produced by the two barrels side by side which, according to the wise men, leads the eye better where the shot should arrive. Then there is another sum of reasons, all purely mental, which together produce what is called class, an entity that cannot be acquired, but can be acquired, not flaunted, but possessed, sometimes not even noticed. to have it, but those who frequent you notice it. Latest notations: fixed chokes, perhaps modified cylindrical and 4 stars, short barrels like the famous Churchill XXV and if possible with the same tapered rib to go and see in one of the books of the late Gianoberto Lupi, two triggers, English handle and recoil pad finished in wood. The caliber: do we want to take further satisfaction? Yes, so let's choose a 20/70 caliber.
The cartridge: we are here to talk about the cartridge after much digging, but we believe that the prey deserves it. By choosing a 20/70 caliber we place ourselves in a slight state of ballistic inferiority, the one that is checked at the plate and that signals that in the unit of measurement of area there are some fewer pellets than we would count using a classic 12 / 70. However, not everything is so mathematical in the shooting of movement and the lightness of the rifle, do not buy those 20 with the disproportionate weight, it is just a mistake, it will favor the time and precision of the intervention giving you a significant space-time advantage by hooking the prey first and better. , and greater ease in doubling the shot thanks to the lower recoil. The Fiocchi Beccaccia Dispersante that we highlight follows the wave in vogue for some time with a charge of pellets equal to the traditional one of the 16/70 caliber, the ounce of albionic memory: we find in the order the yellow case with black and closure with heat-sealed folds, 16 mm brass bottom, anticorrosive trigger, felt wad, separators in the lead column to accelerate their dispersion, V / 0 equal to 405 m / sec, pressure of 920 bar, shot 5/7 / 9 of the Italian numbering. It is easy to understand how speed guarantees easier success both in tapping the target and in the harmful effect. The packs are of 25 or 250 cartridges and the current price in the armory is around € 10,00 for the box of 25 pieces. The three sizes of the pellets then allow to undermine at short and medium distance, in addition to the woodcock, the prey from the pheasant to the lark with all the intermediate possibilities perfectly within the reach of the caliber and the charge.
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