I have been looking at a lot of pre 1960 pump guns. There seems to be an endless supply of guns with add on chokes and very little demand for them at any price. Cutts, Weaver, Poly choke to name a few. Some nice guns got cut down, to add these versatile choking devices. We complain about screw in tubes and take them for granted but many guns did not even have the option of adding a second barrel to change chokes. How things have changed.

Has anybody compiled a list of all the different add on choke devices that were made? I bet there were a dozen or more makers.

The auction I attend always has some Winchester model 12's in it and if they are in well used condition can't get above the $200 mark. I haven't seen many come thru with after market chokes added though. They are good solid useable guns just lacking in finish. But get one of those guns and cut the barrel down and put a plastic stock on it and parkerize it and they will go nuts for it.

Anyone who butchers a "Perfect Repeater with an add on choke device would probably drink a fine single Malt whisky mixed with Doctor Pepper--RWTF

My Father's youngest brother came back from his time with General Patton's 3rd Army, and got wounded when the breech let go on an old Marlin hammer pump that was on the farm. Fortunately, that big Marlin hammer defected the bolt upwards enough that he just got a gash through his eyebrow. So, he bought a new Model 12, slapped a Poly-Choke on it and used it the rest of his 85 years. While he didn't drink much, he did enjoy a Grain Belt knocked down with tomato juice on a hot summer day. Must have been a Minnesota thing!!

Pump guns were tools, not collectables to these men. Working class men bought pump guns and A5's if they could afford them. If a man needed to alter his tool, to make it more versatile, he would. One gun for everything from quail to geese and deer. People fawn over pump guns more than they should. They built tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and other than a few collectors, there is almost no market for them. So if you like them wait until a nice example comes your way because they just seem to have very little interest. Even the mighty Model 12 seems to be lacking interest these days and I guess that just shows that the buyers are younger with different interest. Back 20 years ago a Model 12 could generate a bidding war if brought to a gun club. I have my share of Model 12's but could always use a few more nice ones at the right price.

And if you want to ruin good whiskey, or even ruin bad whiskey, do as a friend of mine did years ago and mix it with Tab. That was one soft drink which should never be allowed on any bar top. His favorite was Southern Comfort and Tab.

Yah, fer sure dere-- RWTF

Here you go; Cutts Compensator, Herter's Vari-Choke, Jarvis Flex-Choke, Pachmayr Power-Pac, Emsco Choke, Weaver Choke, The Shooting Master (Master Chokes Inc.), The Dyna-Magic,Poly-Choke and Lyman Variable Choke

Researcher added the Hartford Adjustomatic Cyclone
https://www.shotgunworld.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=482452

The Sears and Pachmayr used the same name; POWer-PAC



but had a different cage

Shooting Master Champion 1957



Weaver 1940

Blame it all on Broyles



Cutts' patent was 1930



1930 ad and looking good on that Ithaca SBT!



1954

I have a fairly worn 16 gauge Model 12 with a nickle steel barrel and a solid rib that was cut and had a Weaver choke system fitted to it. It came with the whole family of choke tubes in a pair of leather wallets to hold the tubes and the tool to remove the tubes (a short steel rod that fits through the holes in the tube). I insist that it's the ugliest of all of choke systems I've ever personally examined, but it does work. I occasionally shoot skeet with it. Someday, I'll take it turkey hunting.

Hey Dr. Drewbie-by chance, have you ever read "Hemingway's Guns" by my friends Silvio et al--?? Somehow Hem felt his 1928 era M12 field 12 gauge with 30" solid rib full choked barrel has "worn out" so he ditched it (like he did his wives I guess) in Idaho around 1958 and bought another M12 12 gauge from a hotel bellboy at the Sun Valley Lodge- there are some fotos in that great book showing him carrying it afield- with his pal Bud Purdy wringing the neck on a deceased mallard. They traced his original M12 after his death in 1961, through G&H at Abercombie&Fitch- was sold there-it had been restocked, not sure if it was ever reblued- but after his accolade to that M12 in "True At First Light" in which he finished off a wounded leopard in a mangrove tangle near Kenya with the same "Perfect Repeater" hard to understand how he could let go of it later on at the ebb of his life--you can never wear out a Model 12, a lifetime of shooting, as a 1957 ad showing a hunter with a M12, in waders with a boxcar behind him and a big ass pile of red empty AA hulls--Foxie

I have a Winchester Model 12 with factory cutts and also a vent rib. I love that gun and the cutts chokes pattern very evenly. The trouble is that it is as loud as heck.

I had a uncle who hunted quail over pointers with Cutts choked guns. None of his dogs could hear after about age five. A combination of that Cutts and I suspect untreated ear mites made his dogs deaf years before their time. He must have killed thousands of quail over those dogs. We could hunt in three states within a 20 minute drive and we had places to hunt everywhere in those three states.