In its day, the 8 gauge shotgun was the equivalent of the modern 10-gauge. It was a specialized, big bore hunting gun, popular at a time when the skies of North America teemed with waterfowl, and there were no bag limits. It was also — and occasionally still is — used by waterfowlers in England, where hunters often bag birds by pass-shooting.
Today, we would choose a 3 1/2-inch 10-gauge or a 3 1/2-inch 12-gauge for that type of hunting, but neither existed in the 19th century, which was the 8 gauge’s heyday. Damascus, or twist, steel barrels couldn’t withstand the heavier, faster loads you can shoot in modern, fluid-steel-barreled guns. If you wanted to shoot more than 2 ounces of lead shot, you had to shoot an 8 gauge.

Eight-gauge guns were made in all grades, from simple, utility single-shots to high-grade double guns suitable for a president. Their time in the United States ended abruptly in 1918 when any gauge larger than the 10 was banned for hunting migratory birds. It persists today overseas, where it is still used by a few dedicated waterfowlers.
The 8 gauge still pops up in the United States from time to time in unusual ways. It had 15 minutes of minor movie fame in the 2008 Western Appaloosa as the preferred and always present firearm of Viggo Mortensen’s character.
It has also found a day job, working in the mining, cement, and steel industries (more on that in a bit).
What Is an 8 Gauge?

Like all shotguns (with the exception of the .410), the 8 gauge takes its name from the number of lead balls the same size as its bore diameter that weighs one pound. It’s an archaic method of measurement left over from the time of muzzleloading cannons. But here we are.
The 8 gauge could more usefully be called a .835-caliber. By comparison, a 10-gauge measures .775 inches, and the nominal diameter of a 12-gauge bore is .725 inches.
That extra bore diameter means the 8 gauge can simply hold more shot than a 10- or a 12-gauge. In the blackpowder / Damascus steel era, that meant 1 1/2 to 2 ounces of lead shot. As stronger fluid-steel barrels and smokeless powder appeared late in the 19th century, the guns could safely shoot heavier loads, and payloads increased to 2 to 2 1/2 ounces.
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Shotshell History Class
It’s hard to pinpoint when 8 gauge guns were first developed. Since there was no cartridge ammunition before the mid-19th century, you could have a gun barrel made to any diameter you wanted.
Originally, waterfowl guns, the flintlock “long fowlers” made in England and on the European continent, typically had bores somewhere between .60- and .70-caliber, meaning 20- to about 14-gauge. They also had very long barrels of 50 inches or more to generate higher velocities with slow-burning powder and to provide a longer sight radius since most shots were taken at birds sitting on the water.

In North America, however, a larger, heavier fowler evolved. The Maritime Provincial Musket was a supersized long fowler used for waterfowl and seal hunting.
One example made around 1800 has a 56 1/4-inch barrel and a .812-inch bore, making it an 8 gauge. Certainly, that was not the first 8 gauge shotgun, but it is an early example of the kind of heavy waterfowl gun the 8 would become.
The 19th century was the 8 gauge’s time on both sides of the Atlantic. Oddly enough, many of the same aristocrats who participated in genteel-driven shoots, slaughtering pheasants and partridge with matched pairs of lightweight doubles, were equally happy to spend cold, wet, muddy nights in bays and estuaries, hoping for a shot or two at a duck or goose.
Those hunters needed entirely different guns for the task: long-barreled, big-bore guns capable of making long shots. And, while they used guns up to punt guns with 2-inch bores and 2- and 4-bore guns, only a few of those are doubles. A single-shot 2- or 4-gauge is massive enough with one barrel.
English gunmaker W.W. Greener, in his authoritative 1897 book “The Gun and Its Development,” wrote that the 8-bore was recognized as the standard wildfowling gun.

According to Greener, the magnum 8-bore weighed 15 pounds and had a 36-inch barrel. It was chambered for a 3 3/4-inch brass cartridge containing 2 3/4 to 3 ounces of shot. There were “medium” and “light” 8-bores as well, lighter guns firing 2 1/2 to 2 3/4 ounces of shot and 2 1/4 to 2 1/2 ounces of shot, respectively. An 8-bore, he said, could kill out to 80 and even 100 yards.
Greener claimed a “serviceable” 8-bore with the “cheapest form of breech-action” cost 25 guineas, or the equivalent of $3,000 today. Hunters of lesser means could buy 8-bores imported from France or Belgium, and often those guns found their way not just to British hunters of lesser means, but to hunters in the United States as well.
Eight gauges were never the standard gun on this side of the pond, but they were sometimes seen along the Atlantic coast and in the Chesapeake Bay.
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A Presidential Gun
Perhaps the most famous 8 gauge, or at least the most famous owner of an 8 gauge, was President Grover Cleveland. Cleveland hunted enthusiastically before, during, between, and after both terms in office. Following his first-term election in 1884, Cleveland acquired a Colt Model 1883 hammerless side-by-side in 1885.

At the time, Colt was known for its shotguns, and the 1883 was available in 10- and 12-gauge. Cleveland’s gun was a special-order 8 gauge, and his name was inlaid in gold on the trigger guard. It had extra checkering on the stock and a full pistol grip, making it easier to hold the gun and absorb some of its heavy recoil.
It was the only 8 gauge shotgun Colt ever made, which speaks to the fact that even in its day, the 8 gauge was nowhere near as popular nor as versatile as the 10- or 12-gauges.
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The 8 Gauge Ban
While Colt made exactly one 8 gauge, the famous Parker Brothers made the most 8 gauges in the U.S. However, their grand total over 50 years of production was just 246 guns in all.
Some of those later Parkers had fluid-steel barrels that could fire heavier, smokeless powder loads that earlier Damascus/twist barrels like those on President Cleveland’s gun couldn’t handle.

Despite the small number of 8 gauges in the country, they were still banned along with all other big-bore guns in the early part of the 20th century as a measure to protect dwindling flocks of ducks and geese.
With the 8 gauge gone, the 10-gauge became the largest legal gauge for waterfowl hunting. Winchester’s introduction of the 3 1/2-inch 12-gauge magnum in 1932 and improved cartridges powered the gun up almost to previous 8 gauge levels.
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The 8 Gauge Today
Although the 8 gauge has long since been banned for hunting in the U.S., it is still legal in other places, if not particularly popular. Some English waterfowlers still shoot them, but 12-gauges are much more common.
As I mentioned earlier, the 8 gauge did have a movie moment in 2008, although not enough of a moment to spark a revival the way the movie Jeremiah Johnson revived black-powder muzzleloaders.
In Appaloosa, lawman and gunfighter Everett Hitch (Mortensen), carries an 8 gauge double-barrel shotgun with him almost everywhere he goes and it’s referred to by name more than once as its massive bores intimidate opponents. But the movie gun wasn’t truly an 8 gauge.

Rather than hunting down three identical vintage 8 gauges (it takes more than one gun to represent a single gun in the movies), the prop company started with three 12-gauge hammer coach guns and sleeved fake 8 gauge barrels over the real barrels.
The result was a very intimidating, memorable movie gun that could fire standard 12-gauge blanks. However effective it was in the hands of Everett Hitch, the Appaloosa gun wasn’t representative of common shotguns in the Old West, which were usually 10- or 12-gauge.
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The 8 Gauge Shotgun Gets an Industrial Job
While the 8 gauge vanished from the sporting scene in the U.S. more than 100 years ago and barely hangs on overseas, it isn’t completely gone — it has just gone to work.
Since the early 1930s, industrial 8 gauges have performed jobs from a distance that can’t be done by hand. Both Remington and Winchester build cannon-like 8 gauge guns that fire a number of different loads to perform tasks in dangerously hot environments. These guns can knock buildup out of incinerators, remove bricks from kilns, and clear away ash in power plants.

Both Remington and Winchester also make a variety of 8 gauge industrial loads for these guns with payloads of up to 3 ounces, including lead and zinc slugs and 24-pellet loads of 00 buckshot.
Too heavy to hold, the guns are mounted on a base or hang by a chain from tall tripods and fire by means of a lanyard that pulls the trigger.
Throughout its lifetime, the 8 gauge has been a big gun, regardless of whether it was used for sport, for market hunting, or for industrial use.
Remington calls their industrial gun the MasterBlaster, which is a good description of what it does and a good description of what the mighty 8 gauge has always been.

8 Gauge Shotgun FAQs
Does anybody still make an 8 gauge shotgun?
Although 8-bores are still in use, most are older guns. You could order a custom gun from some English gunmakers, no doubt, but new, factory sporting 8-gauges no longer exist.
A small number of industrial 8-gauges are still made every year, and ammunition is loaded for them. They are tools used to remove buildup in furnaces and have no practical application for hunting or target shooting.
What’s bigger, an 8 gauge or 12 gauge?
The smaller the number, the bigger the bore, so an 8-gauge is larger than a 12-gauge. Gauges are named by the number of lead balls of bore diameter that add up to one pound in weight. If you express 8-gauge and 12-gauge in bore diameter, the difference in the sizes becomes more readily apparent.
A 12-gauge has a .729-inch bore diameter, while an 8-gauge has a bore diameter of .835 inch.
The guns themselves are larger, too, with most 12-gauges weighing 7 to 9 pounds and 8-gauges scaling at 10 to 15 pounds.

What is the largest gauge shotgun?
The largest hunting guns ever made were punt guns. Punt guns were so big, they were mounted on the bows of small boats and used by hunters who would scull up to flocks of ducks and geese and shoot them on the water. Punt guns were used by commercial hunters in the U.S. and also practiced for sport in the United Kingdom.
Some punt guns had bore diameters of more than 2 inches. The largest on record was a gun called “Irish Tom,” which fired 50 ounces of shot — that’s a little more than 3.1 pounds of lead.
Most punt guns were single-shots, but a very few double guns were made.
Col. Peter Hawker, a famous English hunter of the first half of the 19th century, had a double gun built in 1824. The gun had a percussion lock on one barrel and a flintlock on the other — the flintlock barrel tilted up slightly.
When Hawker fired both barrels at once, the slower lock time of the flintlock barrel meant it wouldn’t shoot until the first barrel had frightened birds off the water.
What is a #8 shotgun shell?
Here’s a quick lesson in shotgun ammo nomenclature for newbies — it isn’t an easy sea to navigate if you’re not used to it. The “#8” or “No. 8” refers to the size of the pellets loaded into the shell, not the size of the shell itself or the gauge. In shot, as in gauge, the larger the number, the smaller the pellet.
No. 8 shot is quite small and used for target shooting and for hunting small birds such as mourning doves.
The size of an actual shotgun shell is indicated by the gauge, and by its length in inches.
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