CB - kindly note that I have neither claimed superiority for NID nor have I disparaged any other brand/design/model. I have only given you a reasonably well known datum for a gun of known history. So, considering the three you saw, Mr. Ken's gun, and mine, you have a sample of five. 60% are of unknown history and and 40% are known to have performed very well by about any standard for a long time. Expand you sample size and I think the 40% will go way up.
You can, of course, dismiss Mr. Ken's and my observations as unreliable. But, if you do, the I would wonder why you asked the question in the first place.
An 80 year old gun, such as my 4E, would need average only 1,250 shots a year to reach 100,000 - 50 rounds of trap a year. That would be a lot of shooting for a game gun, but not a lot for a target gun shooting generally mild target loads. By the end of WW I, mechanical design, craftsmanship, and steel technology were entirely satisfactory for firearms. There are some better modern alloys, but not by a large margin. Were I planning to shoot high volumes of targets, I'd opt for a more modern gun. However, with some maintenance, I think the NID would be good for a lot more targets - vastly more than I'll ever shoot.
