This is the shotgun I bought today, August 30, 2001. I shot the second 50 rounds from my Grandfather's L.C. Smith yesterday, and realized that it was not a good idea to use an 80-some year old gun for day-to-day trap shooting. So I looked at the Winchester, Mossberg, and Remington catalogs. The guy at Dick's Sporting Goods tried to sell me a Browning pump, and I looked at the Winchester auto-loaders and a Beretta over/under. Nice guns! But I opted for low bucks: $225 once I get the $25 rebate from Remington ($329 MSRP). If I find I really like trap shooting, and am good at it, I'll get a better gun. Until then, I think I'll be quite happy with this one.

The gun is a Remington 870 Express twelve gauge with a twenty-eight inch barrel. It can handle 2 3/4" or 3" shells. It came with a mod choke, and I bought a full choke. The mod is the silver cylinder next to the ammo boxes. The full is in the gun. The black inverted T on top of the green handle fabric is the choke wrench. The two bright green pieces to the right of that are the safety key and its cap. You can lock the safety. The dark green rod between the safety key and the barrel is the magazine limiter. Some states require a shotgun magazine to be limited to two shells for waterfowl hunting. The barrel comes off very easily for cleaning or exchanging. Remington sells a rifled barrel for slugs and two shorter barrels, 26" and turkey.

Oh, it makes that satisfying kerchunk (MP3, 19K) that lets intruders know they should skeedaddle.

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