I bought one of these cheap recently, I had to do a bit of a clean up on it, but it's in otherwise good shape for a shotgun almost as old as I am. I think it would make a great utility firearm to have for hunting in thick bush, as I would not be afraid to get it dirty and wet. I have done some dry firing with it and am now working the action pretty good. I am left handed and reach over to work the bolt handle. For that reason, I am not a fan of regular eye relief scopes on bolt action firearms. I have yet to try it with a magazine but one is one the way. I tried it out with common Winchester 1 ounce hollow point slugs @ 25 yards, and it was bang on for windage, but was shooting about 6" low. shooting low is better than shooting high at that range imo. Wrt shooting it with the Winchester slugs, the grouping seemed a bit loosey-goosey on the Poly-choke slug setting. I measured the skirt, and I more or less had to make a series of measurements around the diameter as these slugs seem to come out of a bin or something, and are sometimes dented up around the skirt diameter. The measurement averaged out to around .717" or so. I set the shotgun to the modified setting and noticed it miked to around .715" in diameter or so. I might try it with the choke on the modified setting. The Improved cylinder setting was around .720". Best regards, Tony
Just for ** an giggles, I tried shooting into a snowy patch of the backstop with some Remington 00 buckshot loads on the extra full setting. The pattern was about the size of a lunch plate also at 25 yards, and the bolt was a little harder to lift up than with the slugs. (They say shot gives higher breech pressures than slugs).
