I miss my old friend, Mr Thornhill.
He had wit & polish when it came to acerbic commentary.
As for my favorite non-double, ass't models of the stellar pump-guns noted have passed thru my hands, including the 16ga Model 31 over yonder in the corner.
I began with a Mod 195, 16ga Mossburg Bolt action, purchased for me by my father for my twelfth birthday, for fifteen dollars out of the well stocked pawnshops of the time. Young reflexes and LOTS of dry-fire practice eventually enabled me to handily shoot skeet doubles -- with all it's Polychoke and Monte Carlo comb glory.
It was my only shotgun, until I purchased a Model 100 Ithaca twenty upon return from the service. Which selection was due to a certain shotgun writer of the time, who was proclaiming the 3" 20 ga as more or less the answer all game needs. [Wallace Labisky?]
BTW, never bet on pheasants against a man who grew up on a North-Western Ohio farm during the Depression, and his full-choked single barrel ejector gun. Second shot? Right between the fingers of Dad's right hand, and delivered faster than all the uncles in the drive, with with their autos and pumps.
Seven year-old witness to the fact, me. The gun doth not make either the hunter nor the man by mere possession, but by it's use shall ye mark him.
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