The collection of hunting weapons in the Gatchina Palace and Estate Museum contains some unique and unusual items. The maker of this flintlock gun is unknown. Most likely is was manufactured in Germany. The gun is made in the form of a staff. Its barrel and stock form a long pipe painted yellow with a slight curve at the place where other guns usually have a wrist. The lock along with the trigger and the trigger guard is fixed to the barrel with a screw. It can be easily unscrewed and the lock can be removed from the barrel through the muzzle end.
With the lock taken off, the gun looks like a staff or a crutch. The owner of the gun could load it beforehand and then go for a walk as if the gun were a walking stick while keeping the dismantled lock charged with gunpowder in his pocket. When necessary, he could easily screw the lock to the barrel, fire a shot, then take the lock off again and hide it. Most likely such constructions were popular among poachers and were meant for hunting relatively small game, judging by the small calibre and thin walls of the barrel which did not allow to use heavy projectiles and large charges of gunpowder. This theory also explains why there are no signatures or markings which usually indicate the gunmaker. The gun can only be broadly dated to the 18th century. It should be mentioned that the construction of the gun is not unique.
Recently an almost identical gun clearly manufactured in the same workshop as the gun from the Gatchina collection has been bought for the collection of the Military Historic Museum of Artillery, Engineer and Signal Corps. The main difference between the two gun lies in the form of the butt plate, the possibility to detach the stock from the barrel and the presence of a ramrod hidden inside the stock. The forged round barrel is painted light-brown. The gun has no sights. On the inner side of the lock plate there is a wide iron ring, which can be put on the barrel. The furniture includes a brass butt plate which imitates the top of a crutch, a brass trigger guard screwed to the lock plate and a wooden plug for the muzzle which has a brass pipe with an iron tip on one side.
Before being transferred to Gatchina in the second half of the 18th century, many guns and pistols were kept in other European armouries. It is obvious from inventory numbers cut or stamped on a trigger guard — a part which covers the trigger preventing its accidental release. This gun does not have any numbers so it has not yet been established to which collection it originally belonged.
