The pain was still there high in my cheek the morning after shooting Baikal’s double barreled Bounty Hunter. This had been no trap shooter’s 12 gauge meant for shooting strings of twenty clay birds, so I had paid the gun’s price of very high recoil for extreme potency in a small package. After paying my bill at the gun range I had asked the guys working behind the counter–“If you were in Africa and couldn’t return to the U.S. for a week what gun would you want if you suddenly realized there was a man eating lion loose and your odds of surviving the week weren’t good?”

One of the men replied: “A scatter gun but I might take a high powered rifle if I could get a long range shot off at him which would take him out as a threat.”

“But if the lion didn’t show himself except at night, then the only clear choice would be the shotgun,” I replied, to which everyone agreed.

Although strictly a short range weapon, the shotgun was often favored over more modern rifled arms by the Confederate Cavalry during the Civil War, was used as a trench broom during World War I, and was still being used for short range jungle fighting in Vietnam. It was preferred by Old West gunmen over the six shooter when things really got tough, and is the most commonly used backup weapon to a cop’s handgun. The gun carried by Pleasure in the pictures on these pages is the Russian made Baikal Bounty Hunter, a side by side double barrel with improved cylinder chokes targeted for Cowboy Action competitions in which the contestants wear 19th century Western garb and shoot revolvers, shotguns and rifles that are as authentic to the Old West as practical. Paine, Pleasure’s mother, the other half of the blonde feature duo, is carrying a Winchester 94 trapper in .45 long Colt, a rifle roughly similar to the Winchester 1873's and 1892's chambered for the .44-40 cartridge of its day.
 
Many thanks to Pleasure and Paine who you can visit at  for being our models.