It has always disturbed me that for all practical purposes a rusty pumpgun built in 1900 can kill upland birds and ducks as well as a gold inlaid double produced by an artist last year. If dead birds were the only objective, a great deal of expense and effort could have been spared.

But there is a complex status situation here. I knew a prosperous gunner who deliberately rusted his engraved Parker so it wouldn't look new. I chased birds with a fine shot who used a very old Model 12 Winchester pump with a solid rib and, savoring its dull-silver patina, would have fought to the death anyone who suggested renewing the bluing. I knew an expert quail shooter who carried a riot gun in the Dixie palmettos, although he had some pretty guns at home. He kept snickering about it, which made me uncomfortable.

There is the "classic bird gun," admired by almost a hundred years of shooters, and I can describe it without a dissenting vote, I am sure. I think we had better get it out of the way first.

The classic bird gun is a side-by-side double. It either has no pistol grip at all or has a semi-pistol grip, which has little or no effect on its feel or use, and it has a "splinter" fore-end. It is quite light, weighing substantially less than seven pounds in 12-gauge, and as chosen by Americans it usually has rather short barrels, longer in Europe. I guess it got its start in England, where people have shot well for a long time, and where sportsmen have been just a mite hard-headed about proper defense against driven grouse and pheasants.

The splinter fore-end (sounds like an American term) is a little checkered sliver of wood that encourages a rather short hold on the barrels. The British keep explaining that it is for holding the gun together rather than for grabbing in the heat of battle. They advocate reaching much farther out along the barrel, and you can buy those leather handguards to keep your hand from getting hot out there. This bothers me no end, for the colonists, who generally advise a shorter hand hold, have regularly used a longer fore-end.

Just when I thought sexism was pretty well stamped out in the upland covers, a lady had a long fore-end built for her high-grade double so she could follow the British instruction of a long reach without fear of her gun rusting inside the leather handguard. I think she is accepted at all only because she is very pretty and wears beautifully tailored shooting clothes.

I QUALIFY AS AN AUTHORITY on all of this stuff because I have an English shotgun. I got a leather handguard but it was the wrong size and every time I fired it would slide my hand way out toward the muzzle with the recoil. I gave it away, and so did the fellow I presented it to. He denies his ingratitude but I could swear I saw another acquaintance using it on a 10-gauge goose gun. It was supposed to be for 12 gauge.

It is hard to argue against the 12-gauge, with its endless load combinations, as a practical game gatherer. The 20 can be made lighter and almost as potent, although it has a harder time with its patterns in the heaviest loads. The 28 is a prestige passion and uses a beautifully balanced shell, although a mite light for things like pheasants or Western prairie birds. The 16-gauge, a favorite in Europe, has been called the perfect upland gauge, but was ostracized when left out of the American skeet programs years ago. Its popularity has been geographic and there have been quite a number of 16s in the South all along. This caused department store buyers to make some northern mistakes. I once found some Northwestern stores trying so hard to get rid of overstocked 16-gauge shells that it was worthwhile to buy a 16, just to get a lifetime of inexpensive ammunition.

The little .410, drooled over by collectors, can be used by careful experts for things like quail and woodcock. Most of us should keep it as a pet, but some fine ones are put to strange uses. An owner bragged that his $30,000 side-by-side .410 is excellent at potting grouse off branches for big-game camp meat. A Lamborghini would be nice for newspaper delivery if it had more storage space.

I guess the most remarkable things about upland guns in the past 40 years are the boom in over-unders and the production of precisely made choke tubes. A few years back you'd have had to install a choke device in a Holland & Holland over the owner's body, but I understand quite a few "best" grade guns are getting them added these days. In a way, they cut into sales because a fistful of easily installed choke tubes can take the place of separate barrels and more guns. Many people who buy really expensive guns, however, are not going to be deterred by practicality.

Although autoloaders and pumpguns are treated like land mines by the upper crust of game shooting, the over-under causes game-gun experts to take photos and draw diagrams to illustrate supremacy of the classic side-by-side without such gadgetry as ventilated ribs and single triggers. They would rather not be told that competitive shooters nearly all choose a single sighting plane.

THE OVER-UNDER'S POPULARITY in America has been explained by the fact we are "a nation of riflemen and repeating shotguns" and are thus wedded to the single sighting plane. But after smoldering for many years, the sporting clays game got really hot in Britain, mainland Europe, and the United States, and when competition really turned upward, the hardware winners tended toward over-unders and some autoloaders.

Through all of this learned survey, note we're dealing with gun lovers willing to spend plenty for pretty ones. There are dog experts, woodsmen, and game-bird authorities who consider guns as just essential tools and don't even notice a little rust--or crude stocks that look like discarded berry crate wood.

Shooters who feel they are ready to graduate from ordinary shotguns and want something special can sometimes face the same type of problems met by the happy soul who feels he is ready to shift from the family sedan to an exotic sports car. In many cases a 1980 Chevrolet is more reliable than a hundred thousand dollars worth of touchy adjustments. The local gunsmith isn't likely to have an ejector part for an Italian masterpiece exhibiting Pan and a chorus of prancing maidens on the sideplates. This was emphasized by the man who was showing me a finely engraved 28.

"It's never been fired," he said, "and maybe it's not supposed to be."

I went quail hunting with a real wizard who can afford fine guns and was carrying a new one. His dog pointed.

"If I fire this damned thing it will cost me $2,000 in depreciation," he said.

He killed a bird but didn't seem very enthusiastic for a few minutes.

Now engraving and inlays don't contribute much to shooting efficiency but can be pretty important. There are lovers of great detail in engraving and others who don't want it at all. There are, of course, many schools of engraving, the images going all the way from delicate scrolls to the over-under I noted with a beautifully done (in gold) image of a bull being belted on the stern with a bass fiddle. There have been Elvis Presley in action and Washington crossing the Delaware. Some of the owners are proud of how much they spent and others are secretive.

AMERICANS ARE MORE CHOOSY about wood, I think, than shooters from England and Europe. I have seen some beautiful European guns with stocks apparently constructed from sawmill scrap, and one had a patched knothole that showed when the finish began to wear. Choice figured stock wood comes from old trees that have been thirsty all their lives and produce tortured grain. One custom gunsmith told me the general public was most impressed by a carved and dyed stock in his window, whittled during slow periods by "a kid who works down at the hamburger place." No one mentioned the classic checkering designs next to it.

Far from home, repairs become mighty important. In a fit of conscientious research I cornered a well-known gunsmith, who has built guns from scratch, and asked him what gun he would choose if he were going into a wilderness with no access to tools he couldn't carry in his pockets. He didn't hesitate and announced it would be a Remington Model 870 pumpgun. (Dear Remington: Send my new 870, care of the publisher.)

"Bird gun" covers a broad territory and I am intrigued by those chosen by dove shooters in Central and South America, where some experts fire two thousand shots a day. They lean toward gas-operated semi-autos (minimum recoil) and carry little boxes of carefully chosen and inexpensive repair parts. In some localities they are allowed to bring in only one gun but additional barrels are okay.

American shooters have been lovers of large noises and hard kicks ever since ammunition makers started giving their shells names that sound like the crack of doom. When the occasional hunter misses badly he naturally assumes he needs more powder and shot, a contention scorned by owners of fine game guns, which like to come apart with heavy loads. The English tend toward short shells with light charges, and new owners of British guns have taken a superior attitude in explaining to me that light loads and open bores are enough for anything I'm likely to encounter on high ground.