Rook rifle

The rook rifle, originally called the rook and rabbit rifle, is an obsolete English single-shot small-caliber rifle developed from 1883 by the London gunmaker Holland and Holland for shooting rooks, rabbits and other small game. Built light enough to carry on a country walk while still accurate and powerful enough for small game, it was typically a single-shot break-open or miniature Martini-action design, first chambered for a .295 inch (7.5mm), 80-grain round before later variants spanned .22 to .38 inch calibers. Holland and Holland alone produced roughly 5,000 of them in the late nineteenth century, alongside makers such as Westley Richards and W.W. Greener, and the type saw wide use across Britain and the British Empire before the rise of the .22 Long Rifle cartridge pushed it into obsolescence in the early 1900s.