Weapons Wednesday - Feeding from the bottom

Before we get too deep into today's post on fine sporting shotguns, I have made words elsewhere on the interwebs. Click here to see what your favorite Counter Jockey carries in his pockets everyday.

For whatever reason, I am right handed and left eye dominant. My vision is pretty crappy but when I close my right eye I see decently through my left eye.

So, through out my shooting life, there has been a mess of contradictions. I shoot bolt guns awkwardly unless I'm on a bench. If I'm shooting a full sized hand gun I embrace my inner Larry Vickers and just turn my head.

However, there is one platform that I some how always shoot well and can reload without looking like a monkey trying to have intercourse with a football as I do it.

That gun is the Ithace 37, in all of it's various iterations.

As always, the Ithaca 37 was a gun designed to get around or outlast various John Browning patents.  Seriously, to steal paraphrase Tam, when the U.S. Space Force invades Jupiter for ice, the hover tanks will have M-2 machine guns on the commander hatch.

That being said, Ithaca wanted to produce a pump gun on par with the Model 12. And had to wait until 1937 to do it. Which to paraphrase the President, was the worst time ever, in the history of ever, to introduce a sporting shotgun.

Mine has taken many a dove and a couple of ducks. In college, I decided that I would embrace my inner Whiz Kid and only keep one shotgun to do everything. It worked okay for home defense (never needed it), okay for informal skeet shooting, and bagged me one solitary mallard one early morning when I should have been at PT before class.

The Model 37 is definitely a gun from another country, to borrow a term from Colonel Cooper. Machined and well engraved with nice wood.

One Day I'll get good at photography

Ithaca produced 1911s and Grease Guns during the war. In a a weird twist of fate, during my Father's service in Southeast Asia, he carried a cut down Ithaca 37 DS Police riot gun and an M-3 grease gun. Compact, handy weapons easy to sling to your person in the confines of either an HH-3 or HH-53.

My Old Man was a couple of different Ithaca bird guns, even to include one my Mother shoots rarely. Which, to me, epitomizes the appeal of the Model 37. Fine bird guns, duck guns, riot guns for the police, trench guns for the military, and home defense versions of the Model 37 have all been produced. My favorite episode of "Dragnet" involves Sgt. Friday checking out a 37 DS Police from the armory, loading four shells, loading one into the chamber, topping off the tube, and dropping an extra shell in the pocket of his sport coat. Be Prepared.

Hell, CPL Hicks even uses one to kill a Xenomorph. Juan Rico has one mounted under his Morita carbine.

Pop bought me the above pictured Featherweight for Christmas one year shortly prior to Commissioning. I shoot it okay. The stock is a little short and the barrel is kinda short for my preference.

But it looks good on the rack, and every so and Old Timer will come into the store and ask about "old 37s" and I can square my shoulders and say "Yeah, my Old Man bought me one. It's a great gun. Especially if you shoot left handed."