The history of a combined gun with three barrels (drilling in German, in our country simply “tee”) dates back to approximately the 1870s. The innovation here belongs to German gunsmiths, who managed to create a hunting rifle that satisfied the needs of wealthy and discerning hunters.
2. For shooting small animals, it is possible to use a “liner” - a short rifled barrel chambered for the .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire cartridge of 5.6 mm caliber, often simply referred to as .22 WMR, .22 Win Mag, .22 Magnum or simply .22 Mag. The design of the “liner” ensures its precise zeroing and rigid fixation, guaranteeing the stability of the firing of the insert barrel, and its lightness and compactness (as well as the miniature size of small-caliber cartridges) allow you to carry the insert barrel in your backpack pocket for as long as you like without any hassle. In this case, the effective firing range from such an insert can slightly exceed 100 m.
A universal gun, essentially a rifle and a double-barreled shotgun on one frame, capable of solving the widest range of amateur hunting tasks - a unique and respectable design. And the dream of many domestic amateur hunters. It’s probably worth noting that fans of the European part of Russia go hunting, at best, only a few times a year. But we should not forget that the overwhelming majority of our hunters live on the periphery of the country.
And the worldview, needs and, most importantly, the capabilities of the bulk of the hunting community in our country are radically different from the “European”, “generally accepted” and other “civilized” ones. Therefore, in this article the “tee” will be considered from the position of the majority. Those. – hunters of the impassable taiga and forested mountains of Russia.
Having some, rather random, experience of hunting with combination guns, I tried never to go into the specifics of their design and the history of this interesting, but unusual for Russia, hunting weapon. Accustomed to pragmatically evaluating any weapon from the standpoint of not only a one-sided consumer position, but also taking into account production (consider historical, geopolitical and economic) realities, I understood the immensity of the topic of combined hunting weapons and the complexity of its disclosure, both for my own understanding and to convey to the reader. Therefore, it was decided to show the design features of drillings more clearly, in photographs, but we will try to discuss the specifics of using “tees” in our conditions in more detail. And it would be great if practical hunters from the peripheral regions of Russia responded to this article, talking about their experience of hunting with three-barreled “combinations”.
3. “They” and us
First, let's try to make a decision and, no matter how unpleasant it may be for some of our hunters, come to terms with the fact of a completely different approach to hunting in Russia and in Europe. Let us remember that since the Middle Ages in “civilized” Europe, any desire to hunt was eradicated by draconian methods. How to use the forest: poachers and loggers were physically tortured, and the methods of execution were no less sophisticated than in the basements of the “holy” Inquisition. However, European forests were completely destroyed (almost all modern forests in Europe were planted by humans), and many animal species simply disappeared. Today, forests in European countries are gardens with half-tame deer and wild boars. And classical European hunting is just a parody of hunting in our conditions, which is not distinguished by “glamor” and comfort, but is Hunting with a capital “H”.
Sauer 3000 Drilling made in Germany. A three-barreled shotgun with two smooth upper barrels and one lower rifled barrel. Smooth trunks: 16x70. Rifled barrel chambered for 7x65R cartridge. Trigger: with two triggers. Weight: 3-3.3 kg Length: 106.5 cm, barrel length: 63.5 cm. Chokes: half and full choke. Sights: lifting shield and front sight; possibility of quick installation of an optical sight.
4. Speaking about the features of European and Russian weapons, we should not forget about the traditional conditions and specifics of their use. What is modern “European hunting”? As a rule, this is shooting from a tower at a baited animal or from a number during a raid hunt. And not for food, but for fun or prestige. The most important component is the external surroundings: comfortable hunting lodges, expensive hunting clothes, exquisite and specific weapons, twigs and feathers in hats and other attributes of an “elite” vacation. Guaranteed shooting of a baited animal from an insulated tower is not a multi-day trail in the snowy taiga or even hunting in a den. This, in my opinion, is simply a cynical murder that does not require any hunting skill, endurance and willingness to be left not only without a “trophy”, but also to lose health or even life.
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5. Can you imagine a Siberian fisherman who lives by hunting, armed with an expensive German tee or an elegant rifled Austrian single-barrel “breaker”? Me not. For most of the fishermen in Russia have an SKS or “melkan”, paired with a double-barreled shotgun. And they carry two guns at once. The wonderful “Belka” “combiner”, suitable for fur hunting, is not the best weapon when meeting a bear. In addition to the highly controversial practical suitability of imported “tees” for fishing in our conditions, a significant factor is the price of such weapons.
6. He who lives by hunting does not need sophisticated engraving and butt nut on his weapon. He needs a tool. Axiom - in a normal forest, any gun very quickly loses both its external luster and its original value. The gun gets wet and freezes in the rain and snow, falls along with its owner onto the rocks and into the water, and ends up falling down onto the rocky mountain path from the rider’s shoulder. You never know what happens in the forest!
7. Middle part of the tee on the left side. On the side, above the triggers, there is a Griner system fuse.
So we have come to where we started - the type of weapon is determined by the conditions of use and the purposes of the hunt. And also – legislative restrictions on the use of rifled weapons, as they were not so long ago in the USSR. Therefore, as V.E. Markevich once wrote, it turned out that: “Modern tees are well developed by European gunsmiths. German masters are ahead of others in this matter, and Austrians, Czechs and Belgians are trying to keep up with them. And tees are most widely used in central Europe.” Not much has changed since then.
In short, the “tee” was originally developed as a universal weapon for “landowner” walks on foot, when you don’t know who you’ll run into – a roe deer or a quail. Serious hunts require specialized weapons - that's a fact. For universality always requires sacrifice, which we will discuss below.
8. Tees in Russia and the USSR
In modern Russia, amateur hunting is quickly and irrevocably becoming a pastime for wealthy people. For the poor and those who generally live only by hunting, laws are now being written and adopted just as quickly, which in the future will completely bury both hunting and the very desire to hunt legally. Of course, poaching, like partisans, is physically impossible to defeat, so our forests and fields are just as guaranteed to be empty.
In tsarist Russia, which it is now so fashionable (and equally stupid) to say “we have lost,” amateur hunting was also available only to the rich, to a measly few percent of the population. The hunting poor subsisted on hunting and poaching, fortunately this was uncontrollable even then, but sometimes allowed them to feed their families. And then, as now, the “elite,” not satisfied with the quality and range of domestic hunting weapons, ordered expensive guns from English and German-Austrian craftsmen from “Europe.” In the same way, motivating this with “high matters”, such as the aestheticism of hunting and the insignificance of the amount of meat obtained. Looking through the catalogs of our capital's gun stores from the very beginning of the 20th century, you willy-nilly pay attention to how successfully sales of expensive guns were in those difficult years, when every year and every other year another wave of large-scale famine swept across Russia, unable to feed itself. .
Trigger tee of the Zulian master Heim
9. No matter how unexpected it may sound, the strict socio-economic distinction between hunts for the “boyars” and for the “black people” in Tsarist Russia can be traced everywhere - in Russian literary classics, and in art and the very spirit of that time. Unfortunately, now we are observing the same social phenomena, these are the realities - there is a “beautiful and noble hunt” and there is something else, either “ignoble” hunting, or banal forced poaching for the “rabble”. And anyone who claims that hunting in Russia today is just pleasure is either lying or does not have information about the state of affairs in the country outside the Moscow Ring Road.
Rifled insert for small caliber cartridge
12. So, we again come to the point that drilling is an elite weapon that requires appropriate conditions, practice of use and adequate care. The design features of the “tee” impose special requirements during its production, which greatly affects the cost of the product.
That is why the “tees” created in the USSR were released in extremely small quantities.
in quantity: the same TOZ-28, created in the early 60s, was both expensive and impractical, due to the weak cartridge for a rifled barrel and smooth 20-gauge barrels. TsKIB “tees” MTs-30 and MTs-140 already had a rifled barrel chambered for 9x53 cartridge and smooth 12-cal barrels. But they were produced only to order, in extremely insignificant quantities, and the cost was appropriate. Once again the hunting community was able to verify that there is some truth in the axiom “drilling is an elite weapon.”
Barrel selector and cocking indicators
Having escaped confiscation and destruction during the Second World War, the German pre-war Sauer-Drillings continued to serve domestic hunters. But already like ordinary double-barreled shotguns or smooth-bore triple-barreled shotguns: during legalization, rifled barrels were either drilled to a “smooth” 32 caliber or rendered unusable by perforation. Although the well-known “cartridge” problem still quickly turned any “tee” into a heavy double-barreled shotgun with an “extra” barrel.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the realities are such that the “tee” in Russia also serves more as an indicator of social status or material well-being than as an ideal hunting weapon for our conditions. IZHMEKh's attempt since the late 1990s. (when an order was received from the USA) to establish the production of inexpensive two- and three-barreled combination shotguns ended in nothing - the order was canceled, the drawings “disappeared”, the developments were forgotten. It’s a pity - the vertical “tee” MP-271 and the “horizontal” drilling MP-272, designed, respectively, on the basis of the Izh-27 and Izh-43 guns, could occupy the niche of inexpensive combined weapons, both for amateur hunters and fishermen . Therefore, our hunters, as before, are forced to buy either very expensive new European-made drills or look for more or less preserved old guns on the secondary market.
14. Design features
The classic “tee” is a gun with folding barrels, with a rifled barrel located under two horizontally welded shotgun barrels. There are drillings with the top two rifled barrels, but they are more specialized and less durable weapons.
14. Design features
The classic “tee” is a gun with folding barrels, with a rifled barrel located under two horizontally welded shotgun barrels. There are drillings with the top two rifled barrels, but they are more specialized and less durable weapons.
15. Sauer 3000 with barrels removed. Please note that the locking of the “tee” is structurally identical to the triple locking of a conventional “horizontal” - the hooks of the barrels are locked with a Perdet bar, the upper protrusion of the breech end of the barrels is locked with a Griner bolt.
The first models of tees had locks with external triggers and were heavy, bulky and awkward to use. As they improved, drills received internal triggers and became lighter and more compact. Brought to constructive and technological perfection, this type of hunting weapon is rightfully considered the pride of German and Austrian gunsmiths.
17. 100 m lifting rear sight for a rifled barrel. Spring-loaded and fixed in the raised position only when the lower rifled barrel is cocked
18. The cartridges used in the “tee” make it possible to “cover” almost all types of hunting in central Russia. As practice has shown, in the Caucasus mountains this combination of calibers is also quite optimal
19. Since “tees” were originally designed on the basis of the classic “horizontal”, you can find a lot in common between them. At the same time, due to the increase in the height of the barrel block, the upper smooth barrels have a high location relative to the axis of rotation, which causes the gun to loosen faster. The use of a “deeper” block and the highest quality steels allows us to partially minimize this main disadvantage of “tees”, but the increased weight of the barrel block causes another problem - a significant increase in the weight of the gun. Reducing the caliber of the barrels to 16 or 20, shortening them and reducing the thickness of their walls makes it possible to reduce the weight of the gun to a more or less acceptable value. But this forces us to use the highest quality modern materials and carefully shoot the barrel block. In principle, they don’t shoot much from a drill, but anything can happen when hunting: after shooting 2-3 rounds in a row, “separations” begin from the rifled barrel; the barrel must be allowed to cool.
20.
Technologically, one of the most difficult moments in the production of a “tee” is soldering all three barrels in such a way that, when using an open sight, the bullets of smooth and rifled barrels fall at one point. The Germans have achieved a high degree of perfection in this and for this they must be given their due.
22. Summary
Summarizing the above, we can confidently state that the “tee” is an interesting, good and relatively universal weapon in itself. Especially if its performance characteristics meet the hunter’s needs. The precision of a rifled drilling barrel allows (with the use of optics) to shoot very accurately and at decent distances. As long as the caliber is suitable for your purposes. Paired smooth barrels of 20-12 calibers, despite the relatively short length, make the “tee” quite suitable for feather hunting and any of our classic hunts. It’s not for nothing that S.A. Buturlin called the hunter with a tee “the lord of the forest.” But, quite obviously - with all its advantages, a tee should not be the only gun - when hunting for the same quail or woodcock, this weighty gun, which does not have a “shot” balance, will not be the best choice.
Drilling triggers. The right trigger has a push-pull mechanism, adjustable trigger force and allows firing from the right smooth and rifled barrels.
