53 caddy: You've been given some excellent information here. Consider it carefully.
I presently own 3 Elsies, a very early Quality 2 gun, a Quality 1 gun and a D-grade hammer gun (all pre-1913 and all 12s). I grew up with Elsie and have a nostalgic connection to her but...I don't live under any delusions about them. Mine are all big, heavy 12s that I have used successfully on targets. They would be fine in a duck blind (or on turkeys) and would be adequate for upland work (if you don't mind lugging all that extra weight). Because LC Smith has earned a rather-spotty reputation for problems in their lower-grade guns, I bought all of mine fairly reasonably and then utilized the services of a good gunsmith friend to sort them out (cleaning, minor repairs & cosmetics, and then inspecting the guns to insure mostly trouble-fee use going forward).
LC Smith made something like a half a million guns at Fulton, New York before the floor collapsed in 1949 and the factory was closed. The lion's share of them were the Field Grade models. While their sidelock design is touted widely as being a superior design, they are a very-rudimentary form of sidelock (w/none of the precision or safety mechanisms that made the British versions so famous) and it mostly lent itself to mass-production. The post-1913 guns were even further streamlined for mass-production and quality suffered accordingly. The earlier guns (pre-1890 & from Syracuse, NY) and the upper-grade guns are a different deal altogether, and even post-1913 there were some exceptional examples produced.
Their history is fascinating, some versions are shockingly beautiful, and the design was strong enough to have many survive to this modern day.
Proceed with caution.
Last edited by Lloyd3; 06/23/25 09:50 AM.
