few decades before, who were primarily wildfowl 
     
     gunners, these modern skeet shooters were, almost to a 
     
     man, devoted to upland bird shooting, and by mid 
     
     September were busy on Saturdays working their dogs in 
     
     anticipation of the coming Pheasant and Hungarian 
     
     Partridge season. Skeet shooting was fun, but bird 
     
     shooting still had priority. 
     
    
   
   
    
     The challenging pheasant had been introduced to 
     
     the province within the past decade and, in fact, were 
     
     still undergoing an organized release plan, due mainly 
     
     to the efforts of local outdoorsmen who counted among 
     
     their numbers most of the members of the Charlottetown 
     
     Skeet Club. They, for this reason, were quite 
     
     Satisfied to shut their clay target operation down for 
     
     the hunting season...and the winter. 
     
    
   
   
    
     The types of shotguns being used throughout the 
     
     world were undergoing an evolutionary change that had 
     
     begun in the mid-thirties, picked up in wartime, and 
     
     now, in the post-war period, was moving at a fever 
     
     pitch. The most popular smoothbore had always been 
     
     the reliable side by side double barrel with a full 
     
     and modified choke; or, for the upland shooter, the 
     
     improved-cylinder, with its better short range 
     
     patterns. Now all this was changing in favor of the 
     
     single barrel--the simplified sighting plane, in 
     
     either a pump or semi-automatic action, which was 
     
     being mass produced by the thousands. The 
     
     manufacturers, (Browning, Winchester, and Remington, 
     
     to name a few,) had been building these guns for years 
     
     but now, in the post-war economic explosion, their 
     
     heavy advertising programmes selling lightness, 
     
     balance, and speed were causing shotgunners everywhere 
     
     to stop, look...and buy. The transition was evident 
     
     at the Charlottetown Skeet Club as more and more 
     
     members began to move away from their old side-by- 
     
     sides, and new, single barrel scatterguns began to 
     
    
   
   
    
     appear. 
     
    
   
   
    
     The Skeet Club held a short meeting in the spring 
     
     of 1947 to plan their Saturday shooting dates, and to 
     
     arrange financing for a few cases of targets and 
     
    
   
   
    
     --154--