I had one of these sweet little shotguns several years ago, but foolishly sold it during a period where the cash was more important. I found another one just like it recently that a friend of mine inherited from his Grandfather. Now my buddy isn't a gun guy, at all. He had this for a few years with no intention of parting with it, but I guess the sentimental attachment abated, and he made me a good deal on it. I was very happy to have my favorite bird gun back in the safe. First time I took it out to shoot some clays, it wouldn't cycle properly but maybe 2 or 3 shots out of 10. I took it home and gave it a good cleaning through and through. The gas piston rings look good, and the o-ring appears to be good. There was a lot of very hard plastic fouling in the gas ports that I carefully removed with increasingly larger sizes of drill bits turned by my fingers. Once I was satisfied it was all clean I reassembled it, tried it again. It was better, but still not 100%. It would cycle about 80% of the time. The ammo was that Winchester Universal stuff. I picked up a box of the Estate brand that Wally World sells, and ran a full box through it with only two failures, and that was with a buddy of mine shooting it. I don't know if he could have somehow done something to halt it, but I doubt it.
Today I'm killing a day in between work training days in Chicago, so I run down to Cabela's in Hammond, Indiana. They had some shotgun ammo I hadn't seen before called RIO. Made in USA, and it listed a 1 ounce load at 1250 fps, with the same 2 3/4 dram as the other brands I've been shooting. All the other brands list velocity at 1120 fps. If these shells are loaded to a little higher pressure, they
should make my little 20ga. 100% reliable, if not, I don't know what else to do with it.
I called my wife this morning and told her I might buy a rifle at Cabela's, so now she should be happy all I brought home was one little bag of goodies, and there's even some new electonic muffs and shooting glasses for her. I should be golden.
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)