In response to the questions from NitroX
The rifle is pre-owned, so I can only guess why there are two scopes. One scope is a Zeiss 1.5 to 6 times 42 in a rechnagel swing mount. The scope is good for driven hunt as well as for the late evening / night hunt for wild boars. The second scope is a schmidt & Bender 1.1-4 x 24 a real specialist scope for driven hunt in the winter time. The Schmidt & Bender is not at all suited for the individual hunt in the evening or night, but the advantage is that it has a very broad field of sight and is lighter than the zeiss. The S&B will also be a little quicker to focus as it is less sensitive to the angle af sight thru the scope.

I hunt quite a lot during the night, for boars, and also the driven hunts are a favorite of mine so both scopes will be in use. annother issue is that the ammunition used for these types of hunting may differ where a heavy round nose bullet will be prefered for the driven hunt and a lighter bullet more suited for longer shots will be prefered for the individual hunt so having two scopes offer a quick change in prefered ammunition.

In our European hunting conditions it will be difficult to find one scope that will be suited for both the driven hunt and the late evening / night hunt, there will allways be some kind of compromise. i am quite happy that the scopes are of the older type without any electronics, red dot something as i find that if I can see the boar in the scope then I can also shoot it withe the traditional crosshair, For that reason a real thic type of crosshair is preferred so that it can bee seen in poor light conditions.

As to the caliber I must say that the .375 is new to me and I was not sure how well I would take the recoil. It is not a problem, however the gun is significantly heavier than my other doubles in 7x65R. Walking long distances, sometimes 10 to 15 kilometers during the day or night will not be as comfortable as with the lighter rifle. I have only shoot the 375 standing firmly on the ground but Hunting in Poland I frequently hunt in verry dense wet areas where i have to climb a tree to the height of 5 or 6 meteres to see anything. How I will handle the recoil In these conditions, one leg arround the tree and shooting with two hands remain to be seen but I think I may prefer the lighter gun and lesser recoil in these conditions.

Using a double rifle on a driven hunt gives the advantage of the very fast second shot, the second shot from a 7x65R double will be faster than the second shot with a .375 simply because of the lesser recoil. I shoot a lot of International skeet, and simply using a lighter load, 24 grams instead of 32 grams gives a few fractions of a second more time to shoot the second outgoing on station 4. The same applies for the heavier 300 grains bullet versus a 150 grains 7x65R. I also found that i shoot better skeet with my cal 16 Merkel weighing 2.8 kilo ( average 92.5 / 100) than with a cal 12 Miroku wighing 3.6 Kilo, simply because the gun handling is faster, and speed
is the name of the game in Skeet.

So the conclusion is that I will use the Merkel 375 for the driven hunts this year to get on friendly terms before going for buffalo, and then I will use my belowed 7x65R double ever after.

Darz Bor, Peter Frost Hørlyck