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17 hours ago, Scully said:

Looks very nice Benkent; very similar to my S1 500. 

Cheers mate they are a nice bit of kit for the money. I'm going to look into joining a club so I can get my fac.

18 hours ago, Scrumbag said:

GReat! If you can, do the NRA target shot gun course!

Yeah I'm going to get booked on that for April.

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Hi everyone. I have finally joined the mighty Pump Club. I currently have a Browning BPS and a Customized Winchester 1200 Trap, with a skeet choke barrel.

I have been using Pumps almost exclusively for clays and a bit of PSG for over 35 years.

In this time I have owned 5 Winchester Model 12's. 3 Browning BPS's. 3 Remington 870's. Winchester 1200/1300 and 1 Model 1897. 2 Marlin M120's with custom wood, and 3 Ithaca Model 37's DSPS. 

In can shed some light on the 8 shot 24" Ithaca DSPS in the UK. These guns were imported into the UK by Essex Gun in the early 1980's to get in on the fledgling practical shotgun scene. The gun was available in Parkerized, Blued and Satin Chrome finishes all to the same spec. The slam fire feature was described as trigger override. The cost of the guns when new was from memory £210 parkerized / blue and £240 for the satin chrome version, I believe there were about 200 guns in total. The same company also brought in the 13" stakeout model with pistol grip which you could buy as a section 1 firearm then. When I purchased my second DSPS in 1984 I asked if I could have a look at one of the stakeout models but they had all been sold to the police. 

Back in the 80's myself and two of my friends all shot the Ithaca DSPS, we were known as the SWAT squad at our club. As far as reliability goes the guns worked well with the Winchester cartridges we used then, and even better with Remington cartridges , other brands you could get failures to extract, the gun locking up solid, other breakages incurred were firing pins, action slide bar and a cracked stock in the grip area. 

I spoke to Ithaca about 4 years ago about selling their guns in the UK but the market here is just too small for them especially with the cost of the guns now.

Anyway hope you have found my first post interesting, and here's a picture of my current babes

 

 

IMG_4174.JPG

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4 hours ago, Gerry78 said:

To much hassle if you ask me AUTOS a lot better in my opinion in saying that the americans love them :beer:

Horses for courses. 

You know a load is never going to be ‘too light to cycle’ in a pump etc, less likely to jam and all that. 

In America they actually have the risk of someone coming into their home and having to use those pumps for more than shooting at birds, not jamming or not cycling the next cartridge is a big issue! 

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Lloyd90 ive shot pumps yes there not cartridge fussy but mate using mossberg in duck hide missed a lot of follow up shots racking the pump he said he was taking hes eye of the bird as he was cycling the action as you say horses for courses I Know lot of fowlers using 10g pumps Americans all so use them for home defence Suppose just getting used to them :)

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Welcome Captain! Hope to see your posts on the pump club pages, the biggest single thread on the forum! Interesting info about the DSPS 37s, I seem to recall now that “trigger over-ride” was the hyped phrase in the ‘80s. Explains the presence of these oddities this side of the pond and adds a little to the Ithaca story, thank you

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On 3/10/2018 at 19:33, Captain Skellen said:

Hi everyone. I have finally joined the mighty Pump Club. I currently have a Browning BPS and a Customized Winchester 1200 Trap, with a skeet choke barrel.

I have been using Pumps almost exclusively for clays and a bit of PSG for over 35 years.

In this time I have owned 5 Winchester Model 12's. 3 Browning BPS's. 3 Remington 870's. Winchester 1200/1300 and 1 Model 1897. 2 Marlin M120's with custom wood, and 3 Ithaca Model 37's DSPS. 

In can shed some light on the 8 shot 24" Ithaca DSPS in the UK. These guns were imported into the UK by Essex Gun in the early 1980's to get in on the fledgling practical shotgun scene. The gun was available in Parkerized, Blued and Satin Chrome finishes all to the same spec. The slam fire feature was described as trigger override. The cost of the guns when new was from memory £210 parkerized / blue and £240 for the satin chrome version, I believe there were about 200 guns in total. The same company also brought in the 13" stakeout model with pistol grip which you could buy as a section 1 firearm then. When I purchased my second DSPS in 1984 I asked if I could have a look at one of the stakeout models but they had all been sold to the police. 

Back in the 80's myself and two of my friends all shot the Ithaca DSPS, we were known as the SWAT squad at our club. As far as reliability goes the guns worked well with the Winchester cartridges we used then, and even better with Remington cartridges , other brands you could get failures to extract, the gun locking up solid, other breakages incurred were firing pins, action slide bar and a cracked stock in the grip area. 

I spoke to Ithaca about 4 years ago about selling their guns in the UK but the market here is just too small for them especially with the cost of the guns now.

Anyway hope you have found my first post interesting, and here's a picture of my current babes

 

 

IMG_4174.JPG

Thanks for the Ithaca info. I'm a proud owner of a DSPS after a few years of searching and have asked on here for information on the 24" version but without any real luck. I had a bit of a hard time finding one and its not surprising if there were only a couple of hundred brought in to the country about 30 years ago. I think it a keeper :)

 

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Hi All. Many thanks for the warm welcome . I had intended this post to appear on the Pump Club section, but I somehow managed to post here instead. I'm sure anyone who is a die hard pump fan will have found my post here anyway. Will post on Pump Club from now on. 

One thing I wished had done was to taken more photos of the guns I've owned over the years. I'll put some pictures up soon of a couple of my old guns which you may find interesting.

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Hello to the shootist. Yes you did indeed purchase my 1955 Winchester 97 a few years ago, I hope you are still delighted with it, they are certainly built to last.

I did indeed have a customized Marlin 120.

A bit of info about the Marlin, they were made from 1971-1985 all steel construction with an action very similar to the Mossberg 500. They were designed to look very similar to the Winchester Model 12, even the model number was similar. I had two of these guns ( not at the same time ) both being stocked in exhibition grade walnut that the guy I purchased them off had carved and chequered himself from blanks imported from the US. He was a very skilled craftsman and a great fan of pumps, sadly he's no longer with us.

These Marlins were very smooth guns to operate, with the straight line feeding and twin extractors and very positive ejection they were a joy to use. The only problem with them was the action slide bar assembly, the slide bars were quite slender and prone to breakage, and being made from spring type steel didn't weld well. I got through 3 sets, now spares aren't even available in the US, I sold the gun  preferring the Browning BPS at least you can get parts for it.

Here's a couple of photos of one of the guns. The woods a bit nicer than you get these days !

034.JPG

037.JPG

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Lovely piece of wood there! I passed on one of these a while ago (with an advertised broken slide assembly) I'm ashamed to say I did not even go and view it! I wish I had now as the quality is evident and making slide bars is not the most difficult thing I'm sure. I will be sure to look out for them in future as a quality addition to the collection, thanks for pics!

my search list now with Marlin 120, includes Mossberg Slugster 500, Ithaca DSPS 37, (Always) Remington Model 31, Remington Model 10, Remington Model 17 to name but a few

Edited by impala59
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23 hours ago, Captain Skellen said:

Hello to the shootist. Yes you did indeed purchase my 1955 Winchester 97 a few years ago, I hope you are still delighted with it, they are certainly built to last.

I did indeed have a customized Marlin 120.

A bit of info about the Marlin, they were made from 1971-1985 all steel construction with an action very similar to the Mossberg 500. They were designed to look very similar to the Winchester Model 12, even the model number was similar. I had two of these guns ( not at the same time ) both being stocked in exhibition grade walnut that the guy I purchased them off had carved and chequered himself from blanks imported from the US. He was a very skilled craftsman and a great fan of pumps, sadly he's no longer with us.

These Marlins were very smooth guns to operate, with the straight line feeding and twin extractors and very positive ejection they were a joy to use. The only problem with them was the action slide bar assembly, the slide bars were quite slender and prone to breakage, and being made from spring type steel didn't weld well. I got through 3 sets, now spares aren't even available in the US, I sold the gun  preferring the Browning BPS at least you can get parts for it.

Here's a couple of photos of one of the guns. The woods a bit nicer than you get these days !

034.JPG

037.JPG

Hubba hubba! Now that is a pretty gun! 

Winchester Model 1897 is going well. I shot it at the pump club's first clay competition last year on the skeet stand. 

In the absence of one of the current ithaca 37s which are not imported to the UK I think the BPS is the best made pump gun still made today. 

Edited by theshootist
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Took the 590 out at the weekend just to my local clay shoot and loved it. I was surprised at what you can hit with it only having a 24 inch barrel. I took my 725 with me but was having so much fun with the 590 I didn't even use it.

It' payday next week so going to treat it to some furniture and a sling lol.

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I've just bought a second supernova to replace the one I foolishly sold. It goes with the Wingmaster quite well, in fact I'd forgotten about the lovely longer stock, it actually feels a bit like my B525! I'm going to shoot it for the first time on Sunday, if it goes ok I might even enter an upcoming skeet competition with it. Mostly because if I win it will annoy people lol :D 

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9 hours ago, throdgrain said:

I've just bought a second supernova to replace the one I foolishly sold. It goes with the Wingmaster quite well, in fact I'd forgotten about the lovely longer stock, it actually feels a bit like my B525! I'm going to shoot it for the first time on Sunday, if it goes ok I might even enter an upcoming skeet competition with it. Mostly because if I win it will annoy people lol  

If you like your 525, try a BPS on sporting clays!

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