I attribute the big drops on the old guns to a shooting style of a century ago. For the most part, we have evolved.

A very good skeet shooter I know shoots with his cheek off the stock. He just uses a very well honed instinctive point and shoot method. It took me a while to realize that this was the same method Charles Askins referred to for field shooting in his book, "The American Shotgun," and he likened it to the instinctive method that would have been favored by the old Wild West type gunslingers. If in fact that was an accepted shooting style of a hundred years ago, a gun with less than 2.75" of drop would be a handicap. Obviously, the manufacturers met the market need.

I suspect that as the supply of game decreased in the field, and people began counting targets at the traps, more attention was paid to the eye-barrel relationship. Cheeks were being pushed to wood and the low combs lost favor.

It all goes to show that we haven't changed that much - always looking for an edge, always need a new gun.

BTW, is there any concensus about whether this extreme drop thing is common to a time period, or just common to the US? The 19th century English guns I have are not too far off of what we would go afield with today.