The Lord Provides

The Lovely Bride's favorite shotgun is an old Ithica Model 37 Featherlite in 20 gauge.  The one problem with it is that somebody used a tubing cutter to shorten the barrel and it just doesn't pattern like it should.

The Ithica was built in 1952 so the new style barrels won't fit on it without a return to the factory and she likes the shortened barrel  because it handles better for her anyway.   The barrel is still plenty long enough to be legal and I have given some thought to having it tapped for screw-in chokes but the only local gunsmith I'd trust with that job is notorious for long turn around times.  I've been putting it off for months.

So last weekend, we were cleaning up around the house and I needed to reorganize the safe to squeeze another gun or two back into it.  I got the safe from a buddy who was getting a divorce five or six years ago and it had three guns in it when I got it.  He said he had no place to put them so they went with the safe.    One was a Marlin 30-30, one was a Mossberg 500 in .410 bore and I have never been able to remember what the third one was.   Last weekend, when I got everything out of the safe, way in the back stood an as new Remington 870 20 gauge youth model.   The mystery gun.

Its just  a tad heavier than the Ithica but she likes it well enough.  It even has screw-in chokes.  The best part about it was that after sitting in that safe, forgotten for all these years, I rediscovered it on the night before her birthday.  One of us must be living right.