Perhaps the gun was just ordered with short barrels, as I believe I recall from the Parker records recap that even Parker Bros produced a few guns with 22" barrels on special order. As to using short barrels, I highly recommend such a gun for someone really serious about bagging game in tight cover. Back in the early 70's the local gun purveyor ordered in a few 12-bore Spanish doubles by Erbi with 3" chambers, 18" barrels, and cyl/cyl chokes. They were cheap, so I bought one for my regular quail and rabbit hunting activities; and although the gun was poorly balanced and not very light, it was the quickest pointing gun I've ever used, and absolute death on any game that flushed. I used it a couple of seasons (whenever I could get it away from my brother-in-law) till that fateful Saturday when our weekend hunt got rained out. We returned to my in-laws; and bored, looked for something exciting to pass the time. Seems brother-in-law had acquired a box of Win. 3" mag, 2 ounce loads (BB shot, I think?) and we thought it might be fun to step onto the back porch and blast the trash barrel a few times. That wasn't exciting enough, so it escalated to dares; who would be the toughest man? So we plugged each barrel with one of those big red shells and pulled both triggers at the same time. When the smoke cleared I announced to my brother-in-law that he was indeed the toughest man, as that was the absolute worst stomping I have ever received from a scattergun; but in the process those heavy loads had buldged the right chamber at the forcing cone, permanently retiring the best brush gun I've ever used.
