Francis,
My go to duck gun in the 70s early 80s was an Ithaca M37 12 gauge that I bought new. We hunted the Savannah River spoilage area which is located in SC across the river from Georgia. It was square miles of shallow water settlement ponds where dredging spoils were held when the Hordes of Engineers dredged the shipping channel. Usually dry in the summer, the area was filled with wild plant and grass seeds. The area was flooded several inches in the winter and was a duck haven. One of the regulars we hunted with was a Huey pilot at the nearby Army Airfield. While shallow, the bottom was pluff mud and difficult to wade in so we stood on pallets and traveled by canoe to the blinds. One morning I was with Rip and the canoe capsized in the pitch dark. We righted it, loaded it. My gun was missing. I tried to find it but it was pointless. After the hunt, I called Dale, the Huey pilot. I told him the predicament and I predicted it would be visible from altitude as a straight line in the mud. He knew the general area where we hunted. Dale test flew a Huey over the area and spotted it. As he hovered low with a crewman on a skid with a wire hook to fish it out, the prop wash from the Huey was too much for visibility. He flew back to Hunter AAF and came back with a light observation helicopter with less prop wash and made the retrieve. When he got back to the base, he hosed it down and coated it with oil. I stripped the gun, removed the stock, barrel, slide, bolt, followers, mag stop, trigger mechanism, magazine innards, washed it in hot soapy water and sprayed it down with WD 40, wiped it clean and oiled it. Unfortunately, the brackish water removed the bluing from the receiver, but I shot the gun for years afterwards and eventually gave it to a buddy. If one factors in the costs of two helicopters, crew and fuel, the value of the gun exceeded what a Sousa grade M37 would be valued at the time. Gil
