Rubbish service from gunshops isn't a UK exclusivity

Pine Marten

Well-Known Member
Hello everyone.

I'm off to France in a month's time to spend a week and a bit showing Young Pine Marten to the other half of his family. It looks like I will also finally have a chance to go hunting with my brother-in-law. In anticipation of this, I'm having my EFP updated and decided to find out whether local gunshops carried any 7mm-08 ammuntion, since you can't take it on the Eurostar. I emailed the one in the town where my in-laws live, and asked him for details of any 7mm-08 in stock. I received the following PDF in response:

Qte Stock Prix TTC
2749.R7M081 26.04. 7MMO8 REM 9.07G P20 4715 2,00 34,90
2749.R7M082 26.04. 7MMO8 REM 7.78GR 0,00 46,90

OK, so he has two boxes of 140gr ones, but I don't know which loads, or indeed anything else. I also notice that he's helpfully told me that he has no boxes of the 120gr. Thanks. Anyway, I emailed back asking for details of loads and manufacturer. He sent through a single word, with no punctuation or anything else: "remington".

I don't really want to email him again asking him for more information on bullets and so on, he's just being unhelpful. Does he want to sell some ammunition or not? Obviously gunshop owners being unhelpful to customers isn't limited to the UK. Perhaps once again because I don't have another damned shop to go to anyway and they know it.
 
Nope, because my French is perfect, what with being French and everything! Still, I have now found out that R7M081 refers to Remington Core-Lokt soft points, which I can live with. Even if the guy doesn't really deserve my business. At least it's cheaper than in London!
 
Sorry but I refuse to believe that service can be worse anywhere else than it is in the uk , I e dealt with American and Canadian gunshops and they were great even dealt with German gun dealers and again fantastic , I recently heard of a gent ordering a tikka t3 in 308 ( a truly rare calibre !!!) and was quoted a 6 month wait!!!! Pathetic truly pathetic!
 
Sorry but I refuse to believe that service can be worse anywhere else than it is in the uk , I e dealt with American and Canadian gunshops and they were great even dealt with German gun dealers and again fantastic , I recently heard of a gent ordering a tikka t3 in 308 ( a truly rare calibre !!!) and was quoted a 6 month wait!!!! Pathetic truly pathetic!

youve not spoken to the right people in the uk yet :D
 
Sorry but I refuse to believe that service can be worse anywhere else than it is in the uk , I e dealt with American and Canadian gunshops and they were great even dealt with German gun dealers and again fantastic , I recently heard of a gent ordering a tikka t3 in 308 ( a truly rare calibre !!!) and was quoted a 6 month wait!!!! Pathetic truly pathetic!

The UK importers are GMK. Say no more. :rolleyes:
 
Pedro, PM's French is fairly fluent.

I reckon a lot of the issues with email and gunsmiths is typing. A lot of them (not all), are not used to it and find it slow and difficult.

I think it is a shame that some people don't use email properly. When I send an email, it has my phone number, address and I try and make sure it makes sense (not always succeeding). And I will happily spend money of electronic correspondence. Some gun shops / stalkers / ghillies / estates don't always get this.

Anyway, happy FRIDAY!!!

Scrummy
 
Get a reloading press and be done with this reliance on Plonkers!

Young PM will be able to help you crank the handle too in no time.

K

But then I'd have to buy two sets of reloading gear and leave one in France, because I couldn't take components with me... I think I'll just buy all his Remington and leave them with my brother-in-law for Christmas. The only problem is that I'll have to find somewhere to re-zero. I'm sure that can be arranged. Although it does mean that the box of 150gr Federal Power-Shok that I'd been keeping for boar is useless. Well, not useless. I mean it will kill deer in the UK just as well as it would have boar in France. At the rate I'm going I have enough ammunition to last me another 8 or 9 years anyway...
 
But then I'd have to buy two sets of reloading gear and leave one in France, because I couldn't take components with me... I think I'll just buy all his Remington and leave them with my brother-in-law for Christmas. The only problem is that I'll have to find somewhere to re-zero. I'm sure that can be arranged. Although it does mean that the box of 150gr Federal Power-Shok that I'd been keeping for boar is useless. Well, not useless. I mean it will kill deer in the UK just as well as it would have boar in France. At the rate I'm going I have enough ammunition to last me another 8 or 9 years anyway...


Chap

Is there a min reg on ammo weight for boar in .fr? I know that I need 155gr or 10.1g ammo in my 6.5x55mm for moose/elk etc... overseas. Just check before you buy his ammo, as the 140gr is only 9.07g

Cheers
iain
 
I've actually just checked the Eurostar conditions of carriage because I couldn't believe that ammunition couldn't be carried with a licenced firearm, but it is true.

That is absolutely ridiculous !

Would you take the ferry instead ?
 
It's down to the individual regional hunting federations to specify a minimum if they like, regulations vary a fair bit throughout the country. And then the various clubs and associations can have additional bye-laws. Also bear in mind that a lot of people use slugs in smoothbore shotguns. More to the point though, driven shooting is the norm almost everywhere in France except for where I'm from, in Alsace, although stalking as we know it is slowly gaining ground. Perhaps because of this there isn't the same focus on accuracy and bullet placement as there is here: French hunters tend to favour knockdown power over accuracy. Ranges are short too. It's also fair to say (and I've been checking this, it's not just prejudice) that standards of marksmanship aren't always great. The majority of French hunters pretty much never practice, so a lot of wounding, following up with dogs and dispatching with a spear or dagger takes place. Anyway, that was a roundabout way of saying that the minimum calibre requirement isn't that relevant because everyone goes for .300 Win Mag from the off...

In this case though, I checked and the minimum is a .22 centerfire which I'm pretty sure no-one uses. My brother in law uses a 9.3x62. He doesn't know this though, he just uses the rifle and cartridges that his father gave him. I had a look myself as he couldn't answer my question. Neither does he care: he just shoots at boar, they die, and he eats them. Fair enough. I guess we're just a bunch of kit fetishists.
 
I've actually just checked the Eurostar conditions of carriage because I couldn't believe that ammunition couldn't be carried with a licenced firearm, but it is true.

That is absolutely ridiculous !

Would you take the ferry instead ?

It's not directly to do with firearms, it's simply that no explosives are allowed in the Channel Tunnel and this extends to cars that run on LPG for example. It's a structural thing.

You can't take firearms on the ferry as a foot passenger, which is what I am. They don't have a check-in facility. More to the point though, the Eurostar and TGV route is so much nicer and faster door-to-door. This time though, we're renting a car at Gare du Nord. Easier with YPM and all his kit. Not to mention my kit!
 
Hello everyone.

I'm off to France in a month's time to spend a week and a bit showing Young Pine Marten to the other half of his family. It looks like I will also finally have a chance to go hunting with my brother-in-law. In anticipation of this, I'm having my EFP updated and decided to find out whether local gunshops carried any 7mm-08 ammuntion, since you can't take it on the Eurostar. I emailed the one in the town where my in-laws live, and asked him for details of any 7mm-08 in stock. I received the following PDF in response:

Qte Stock Prix TTC
2749.R7M081 26.04. 7MMO8 REM 9.07G P20 4715 2,00 34,90

2749.R7M082 26.04. 7MMO8 REM 7.78GR 0,00 46,90

OK, so he has two boxes of 140gr ones, but I don't know which loads, or indeed anything else. I also notice that he's helpfully told me that he has no boxes of the 120gr. Thanks. Anyway, I emailed back asking for details of loads and manufacturer. He sent through a single word, with no punctuation or anything else: "remington".

I don't really want to email him again asking him for more information on bullets and so on, he's just being unhelpful. Does he want to sell some ammunition or not? Obviously gunshop owners being unhelpful to customers isn't limited to the UK. Perhaps once again because I don't have another damned shop to go to anyway and they know it.


The guy quoted you the part numbers and that was not good enough?
Have not known any UK gunshop detail ammunition like that!
 
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Good luck with it and enjoy the hunting. I am itching to get in my first boar trip and France is my preferred destination, so will look forward to some photos.
 
Good luck with it and enjoy the hunting. I am itching to get in my first boar trip and France is my preferred destination, so will look forward to some photos.

Well, let's just wait and see whether my brother-in-law actually pulls his act together. But his wife is badgering him about it so I'm hopeful!

Joe-bloggs, no it isn't good enough. I would have expected something along the lines of "Of course sir, we have two boxes of Remington Core-Lokt 9.07gr in 7mm-08 at €34,90 each. I can put them aside for you if you like". That would be the sort of level of information I was after. Notice that it had sentences and punctuation in it. I shouldn't have to trawl through the Remington website to find out whether any of those numbers were associated with any specific product. I mean if you emails Ikea and asked them whether they had any fabric-covered wing-backed armchairs, and they just answered "WZKG5879 £76.24 2 weeks", you wouldn't think that was great service, would you?
 
Well seeing as it is ammunition and not furniture that you were asking about the comparison does not stand, apples - oranges, it would seem that spoon-feeding is the only way to go for you.
Google is so damn hard to use nowadays!


You want a terse reply see Cliffs gunsmithing in the states!
 
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