The LC 16: what it IS

The "weird gun" is finished.  A 16 bore wildfowl gun that weighs close to 8 pounds, with 30" Damascus barrels and full chokes, it appears distinctly pre - modern. Which it literally is- an early grade 2 LC Smith from about 1904.

But it was not unique in its day. So many of us use English guns as our standard, but there are others. In his The American Shotgun in 1910, Charles Askins Sr. wrote: "Thirty inch barrels in a sixteen bore with the stock cut on finer lines makes an especially elegant looking weapon. Should the arm weigh over six and a half pounds,  or be intended for trap and duck shooting, then try the thirty-two inch barrels." This gun follows his formula: his old ornate Flues model Ithaca 16, later owned and written about by Elmer Keith and sold this year for more than $8000.

 

My gun, though it has extractors and double triggers, is obviously built to the same standards.