RALPH GATES IS A MISSOURI GUN COLLECTOR, skeet competitor, and all-around shotgunner whose collection spans everything from single-shot target pistols to machine guns. His specialty is the Winchester Model 12—he owns a rack of them that stretches to the horizon—but he admires pump guns of all kinds.
Asking which he considers the greatest of them all, I expected to hear “The Model 12.” Instead there was a pause, and then a thoughtful “There are three.” The Model 12, the Remington 31, and the Remington 870. Pressed to argue the point, Gates is happy to take the side for or against any of the three against any of the others. To me this suggests a dead heat when it comes to quality, a conclusion supported both by American gun buyers over the past century and by collectors who actively pursue pump guns today.
In 1965, in The Shotgun Book, Jack O’Connor summed up the pump gun situation this way: “They are all pretty much the same breed of cat.” And a pretty good breed they are.
The history of American shotguns includes some very famous names in double guns—Parker, Fox, Ithaca, L. C. Smith. Much is made of the American double being killed off between the wars by rising costs, particularly in hand labor. That’s a convenient explanation, but it ignores one important fact: The double gun, as produced in the United States, was simply unable to compete with the pump gun.
Cost was certainly a factor, but so was dependability. The double’s usual advantage of weight and balance wasn’t a factor, because the American pump gun readily competed against the typically heavy American double. In fact, some pump guns were lighter than a comparable double.
This brings us back to Gough Thomas and his analysis of the pump’s “eumatic” qualities. The sheer genius of Spencer, Browning, et al wasn’t just in making the pump action easy to use, but in incorporating the shooter himself as an integral part of the mechanism.
One of Gough Thomas’s tests of pump guns involved shooting one singlehanded, using only the trigger hand, to see how far back recoil alone would propel the forend. He found that, unlocked, it usually traveled about halfway.
As an experiment, stand as though you were holding a pump gun in shooting position, and have someone simulate recoil with a sharp push on your shoulder. Not only do you rock back, but your lead hand also instinctively comes back toward your body. The pump design is in perfect accord with the natural reaction to recoil of both gun and shooter.
Another great advantage is that the pump gun is inherently ambidextrous. Those that eject straight up (the Spencer and the Winchester 97) and those that eject straight down (Remington 17, Ithaca 37) are even more sinister-friendly. But Ralph Gates is left-handed, and says that having an empty hull from a side ejector pass through his line of vision has never bothered him in the least.
But there are other concerns with the direction of ejection.
Early designs ejected hulls straight up. Side ejection throws the hulls to one side, and sometimes quite a distance, which is bad if you’re on a trap line with a shooter to your right or in a duck boat and want to save your hulls. Bottom ejection solved both those problems.
Where side ejection won out is in pure convenience when shooting only two rounds, such as in skeet, doubles trap, and now sporting clays. You open the action, drop a round into the ejection port, close the action, then tuck a second round into the magazine.
This is impossible with either top or bottom-ejecting designs. It also allows the shooter, in a tight situation, to drop in one round after another, using the gun as a single-shot. This is also an advantage if your magazine spring breaks. Unlikely, but possible.
Pump gun designs, especially early ones with a short, fluted forend, force the shooter to hold his lead hand out where it belongs. As well, when the forend is pushed forward, the lead hand automatically pushes the muzzle toward the next target—a significant advantage when shooting quickly at multiple targets.
Some point out that when a pump gun’s tubular magazine is fully charged, with six or seven rounds in some cases, the weight increases appreciably. Then as each round is fi red the remaining cartridges are pushed to the rear, which alters the balance for each shot.
Today’s game-law and shooting-range regulations mean that about the only places where pump guns are fully charged is in law enforcement and combat-simulation shooting. From a wingshooting point of view, it’s not a concern. Besides, a shooter could always avoid this by putting in fewer shells.
This objection aside, the average pump gun is light and well balanced enough to compete with the average double gun, and lighter and more dependable than any semi-auto.
The semi auto as we know it has been around since the 1920s, admittedly becoming more dependable all the time, but anyone who thought the semi auto would doom the pump was in for a big disappointment. Even today the pump holds its own. Its simplicity, dependability, and cost make it a favorite of law-enforcement agencies.
ONE PUMP GUN THAT HAS BECOME ALMOST A CULT OBJECT IS THE WINCHESTER MODEL 42, essentially a scaled-down version of the Model 12. Winchester produced 160,000 Model 42s between 1933 and 1963.
Today, a small subculture likes to hunt with Model 42s, and it’s the favorite of a few expert shotgunners who insist on hunting everything with the smallest of shotshells. Rather than the whippy, wand-like feel of most .410s, the Model 42 has heft and good balance. Combine that with its buttery operation, and it becomes an excellent hunting gun for those with the shooting skill.
The inherent shootability of the pump gun is what makes the 42 so good in the fi eld, despite shooting a cartridge that is questionable for game in most circumstances.
The pump gun in America followed a predictable path. It was gradually perfected as a succession of designers, driven by competition, eliminated every tiny problem. Then production managers set about reducing the cost of production, and there by the price of the gun, to give a marketing advantage. Because of this, today’s pump gun isn’t (b y and large) as smooth and beautifully made as those of yesterday.
Production costs killed both the Remington Model 31, in 1950, and the Winchester Model 12 in 1963. But today you can buy a new pump gun for a fraction of what it would have cost a century ago. Including the Remington 870 Wingmaster, which is both aesthetically and technically a very nice, smooth-operating gun.
Probably the greatest pump gunner of all time was Rudy Etchen. In a 60-year career, Etchen won title after title, in one game after another, usually shooting a Remington 870. In an interview in 1995 with Bob Brister, shotgun editor of Field & Stream , Etchen reflected on the merits of different types of shotguns.
Unlike most devotees of a particular type, Etc hen didn’t pus h one gun an d denigrate others. Nor, for t hat matter, did Brister. They agreed that, for some purposes, an English-style double couldn’t be bettered (Etchen won a world live- pigeon championship with a Purdey), and in other cases, like doubles trap, the over-and-under has an advantage.
Overall, though, Brister and Etchen concluded that a good American pump is the most gun for the money, anywhere.
“And should some shooting-range snob smile condescendingly down upon your All-American gun, just smile back,” Etchen advised. “There are pump gun shooters around who could probably buy and sell him out of pocket change. Never apologize for a pump gun—just practice plenty and let it speak for itself. ”
Wieland’s first venture into pump guns, in the 1990s, involved an Italian combat job with a heat shield that handled like a sand-filled bludgeon. It took a 70-year-old 16-gauge Model 12 to show him why several generations of pump gunners felt no need to even try shooting a double.
