Defense Articles

Legendary. Classic. Traditional. Nostalgic. Quality. Innovative. These are concepts Winchester for over a century and a quarter. Of course you know them - because you gave the to us.

1993 represents a renewal of our commitment to these ideals. You’ll notice the new look of Winchester firearms as you browse through the pages of this catalog. We are proud of the selection of entirely new products offered, like our Model 1001 over & under. We are pleased to offer limited issues such as the Model 52 rimfire and the Model 12. We have fine-tuned proven products like the Model 70 and 1300 to offer greater advantages. Every gun is being made better, more carefully, than ever in our history!

Our final goal is too give you — the hunter and shooter — a feeling of pride each time you uncase your Winchester. To give you an increased sense of confidence each time you bring your gun to shoulder. This is what “quality” is all about. And we are committed to it more than ever.

Of course, as they say, talk is cheap. So find out for yourself. Study and compare the new 1993 Winchester firearms carefully. We know you’ll be pleased.

Custom Guns

In the early days of Winchester, guns made in the Custom Shop were often called “Highly Finished Winchesters” or sometimes “Ornamental Rifles.” After more than a century of being made, today’s handcrafted Winchester firearms still meet those descriptions. They symbolize the ultimate in what Winchester is all about.

We recognize that Custom Shop guns may represent your utmost desire in a firearm. These are personal guns made to exhibit your personal tastes. They are often a once-in-a-lifetime purchase. So we take our task very seriously. When you order a gun from our Custom Shop, expect the finest hand work and craftsmanship available, performed by the world’s best, still plying their ancient craft from our facilities in New Haven, Connecticut. Only our Custom Shop is capable of taking “form” to the same, full extent that Winchester firearms have always possessed in their “function.”

As always, there are some additional costs associated with these custom firearms. But you won’t be disappointed. Because each gun is so carefully made and embellished, several months will be needed to complete the process, in most cases. Plan ahead carefully.

You can have your choice of a new Winchester enhanced in the Custom Shop, or begin with an already partially customized rifle. Contact your local Winchester gun dealer for ordering details. A special brochure is available on request. The next pages outline several of the most popular customizing options as well as the rifles that can be custom made to exact owner’s specifications.

Personalized gunmaking. All of us would like to have at least one custom Winchester gun in our collections. Our Custom Shop can do it all: decorative hand engraving, inlaying of precious metals, custom stock configurations, and distinctive wood carving and checkering patterns. There are many options available. Or you can create your own unique look. Plus many things can be done to enhance accuracy.

In the early years, a remarkable percentage of Winchester firearms possessed some custom features. Those particular firearms have gained an enhanced level of value over the years. You can expect your new custom rifle to hold its value as well.

Custom Sharpshooter. We are told time and again that this rifle constitutes the ultimate in accuracy. Every component, every feature is directed toward that aim. We call them our 1/2 minute rifles. In fact their heavy stainless steel Schneider barrels are guaranteed to shoot to a 1/2 minute of angle group or less with high accuracy ammunition. As with all other Custom Shop Model 70s, the action is completely hand honed and hand fitted. The custom McMillan A-2 stock is precision glass bedded. Bipod, special Jewel adjustable trigger, and other features are available as options. Protective hard case included. Choose 223 Rem., 22-250 Rem., 308 Win. or 300 Win. Mag. calibers.

Model 70 Custom Grade. This is the classic Model 70 with claw-controlled feeding taken to its full perfection. Parts are taken in the “white” then hand finished, polished and fitted in our Custom Gun Shop. Internal parts are hand honed. The barrel is lead lapped. Even the swivel posts are inletted. When you choose this model you get a full range of custom features to which you can personally add your own stock dimensions as well as your choice of engraving style. For a full listing of calibers and options contact your Winchester firearms dealer.

Model 70 Custom Express. If there is a once-in-a-lifetime big game hunt in your future, then take along a once-in-a-lifetime rifle. Africa, Asia, or north of the 48 — there is no large caliber rifle more proven, and there is none more beautiful. Design and function are the same as our other Express models — but you’ll feel the custom advantage as you examine the craftsmanship and work the action. The custom-bedded stock is of beautifully figured walnut. All internal parts are honed, and the bolt and follower are engine turned for an exquisitely precision part-to-part fit. The special 3-leaf rear sight offers durable, precision adjustability. Choose 375 H&H Mag, 375 JRS, 416 Rem Mag., 458 Win Mag or 470 Capstick.

Colo, Iowa (population 900), a town about an hour northeast of Des Moines, is little more than a rail crossing, a grain elevator, and a dwindling main street. But at 7 a.m. on the opening morning of Iowa’s celebrated pheasant season, the lights were on in a one-story building on Main Street where the Colo Lions Club was sponsoring a pancake breakfast for hunters. I arrived with two pheasant hunters, the three of us clad in the ubiquitous orange vests and caps of the sport, with dogs waiting in kennels in the back of a pickup. We were looking for a place to hunt.

Inside, the scene resembled the cantina from Star Wars in one way: It was a strategic place to gather information and try to seal a deal. Men sat around folding tables swapping stories about the birds they bagged last year, but also grousing about the difficulty of finding land where they could hunt. Iowa is 97 private land, so to have much shot at a pheasant, you pretty much need a landowner’s permission to roam his fields. That’s getting harder to come by these days, with old farms being sold and fence posts hung with new signs that warn, “No Trespassing.”

As my companions and I filled up on pancakes, a friend of theirs walked over and pulled up a chair next to us. After helping himself to a plate, he glanced around slyly, leaned forward, and passed us an enticing tip: He had a friend who had a friend who was a local landowner and might give us permission to hunt on his land. We should drive down past Colo Bogs and look out for Joe Quaker in a grey van. Soon we were on the road, rumbling over gravel roads to the appointed meeting place. When no grey van appeared, we drove on, forced to look elsewhere for hunting ground. Occasionally, we passed hunters tromping through roadside drainage ditches, among the only public turf still available to those pheasant seekers without access to someone else’s land.

This hunt for a spot to hunt is increasingly a part of the sportsmen’s pursuit today. In the terminology of those who follow the problem, “access” is the buzzword phrase. “When you ask hunters directly what their biggest concern is, out of 20-odd possible choices, land access is most often number one,” says Mark Duda of Responsive Management, a firm that conducts surveys for state wildlife departments. The scramble to find land can cause friction between hunters and landowners–in at least one instance, with tragic results. In November, a Hmong immigrant was sentenced to life in prison for killing six hunters in Wisconsin after a trespassing dispute erupted when he wandered onto their land.

The increasing difficulty of finding land to hunt on is, not surprisingly, nudging ever more hunters to hang up their shotguns. In Iowa, the number of hunters in state has dropped 26 percent in a decade, according to the US. Fish & Wildlife Service, and other states have experienced similar declines. One in three former hunters told the agency that not having a place to hunt motivated their decision to abandon their hobby. Around the country, more sportsmen each year am parking their deer stands and duck decoys in the garage.

Even so, hunting is unlikely to disappear entirely. The ranks of hunters may dwindle, but hunting itself retains a cultural resonance, calling to mind a time when pioneers depended on ingenuity and perseverance to settle the frontier and evoking a pastoral nostalgia for farm life. Americans like to think of hunting as a national tradition, even as they tool around suburban parkways in their Subaru Outbacks. Hunting and fishing am touchstones for a world that many suburban and exurban dwellers value, even if their daily lives no longer reflect it.

In American politics, few causes am more potent than those defending threatened heritage symbols. Real or perceived attacks on school prayer, the pledge of allegiance, and the etiquette of saying “Merry Christmas” have all been whipped into political maelstroms. That’s largely because conservatives recognized, and then exploited, a latent but largely unorganized anger. A comparable frustration exists among hunters over land access. But conservatives haven’t tapped into it because the source of this anxiety isn’t a liberal bogeyman, like elitism or big government. Instead, it’s the closing-off of private property and sale of public land, something many on the right defend. That means progressives could find themselves in the unexpected position of being the champions of hunters. Those states that have effectively slowed or reversed the hunting decline have done so with programs that use government to open up private lands voluntarily to public recreation. This time, it may be progressive government that holds out the best hope for preserving an American tradition.

A wink from Uncle Fred

If Americans don’t hunt in the numbers that they used to, hunting goods stores aren’t in danger of going out of business just yet. Hunting and fishing remain major national pastimes: In 2001, 13 million Americans headed out to hunt and 34 million to fish. The total number of “sportsmen”–men and women who hunt or fish–is 38 million today, nearly one in five Americans.

Benelli USA is importing a new version of the Franchi Veloce over-and-under shotgun with a straight gripped, oiled English stock in 20 and 28 gauge with a 26-inch barrel. The Veloce features engraved side plates with gold embellished game scenes. The trigger is mechanical for added reliability in the field and barrel selection is accomplished by setting he tang-mounted safety lever for the desired firing sequence. The monoblock is jeweled for both a pleasing appearance and added resistance to wear

My air assault infantry company faced many challenges during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Not the least of which was the fact that we knew we were going to be entering and clearing buildings in urban settings. These buildings varied in size and shape from the standard home with an outer wall and gate to multiple story universities and hotels. Through it all, the infantry squads tasked with entering and clearing these complex structures performed superbly, by adapting to the situation and always completing the mission.

The shotgun proved to be a very useful weapon for my company. We conducted urban operations in five cities during Operation Iraqi Freedom. For all of these missions, the shotgun was the most versatile weapon in our arsenal. The problem was that we only had two in the company. This caused either the squad and platoon to slow down their momentum to bring the shotgun forward, resulting in that Soldier becoming worn out; or conducting breaches by continuous pounding on a lock or a door, a means that did not allow for surprise. The bottom line is that the shotgun should be a squad weapon. Each squad leader should have the option of this weapon in his squad.

Breaching doors or gates does not have the same emphasis placed on it that the actual room clearance does. Traditionally, field manuals covering this training have Soldiers go through the motions; very little, if any, hands-on training is done for breaching doors and locks. FM 7-8 does not address the “how to” of breaching a door, it merely states that the “squad enters and clears all subsequent rooms …” The reasons for this are many. There may be a shortage of locks to practice cutting, or range control may not allow units to shoot their doors on the shoot house. Time might not allow a unit to shoot and rebuild doors for every squad. There is never enough demo to practice breaching outside of inert training aids. However, based on observation and experience in Iraq, I see an easier way: the tactical shotgun. Thankfully FM 3-06.11, Combined Arms in Urban Terrain, finally gives some emphasis and explanation on some of the “how-to’s” of breaching. FM 3-06.11 explains the three types of breaching: ballistic, explosive, and mechanical, with the majority of its two pages belonging to ballistic breaching.

In Iraq

During urban operations in Iraq, 90 percent or more of the door breaches executed by my infantry squads were with a shotgun. We did have other means of breaching, one being a mechanical breach with the Hallagan set, also known as hooligan tools. This is a set of tools carried by a Soldier consisting of a lightweight sledgehammer, a small set of bolt cutters, and of course the Hallagan tool. The Hallagan breaching tool is a modified crowbar made of non-sparking material with an extra spike and a wedge shaped adz at one end for additional prying and leverage. It also has a fiberglass shaft with a rubberized grip, which is nonconductive and reinforced for large prying jobs. The Hallagan tool works very well with wooden doors and other weak barriers, however, it is less effective on metal doors and gates. Another tool is obviously demolitions. Demo was in short supply for breaching due to the large amount of weapons caches we were destroying. The resupply for demo was unreliable and unpredictable, and squads had to find an alternative. An infantryman’s shoulder will also work as a breaching tool; however, this technique can become painful with the breach man entering, if not stumbling, into the room first. I believe that most infantrymen would deem that unacceptable. All of this leaves us with the shotgun.

Our battalion’s shotguns are organic to HHC. As deployment drew near, the company commanders requested that two shotguns be assigned to each line company for an alternate means of breaching. The train up, in country, for using the shotgun in the platoon was limited to reflex drills and techniques, tactics, and procedures (TTPs) of a collective group of former Ranger battalion Soldiers, former police officers, and others who had some training with a shotgun. So, as we crossed the border into Iraq, each company had four to six Soldiers trained in the limited use of the shotgun in a tactical environment.

Understand that the nine-man squad outlined in manuals for infantry tactics is the exception rather than the rule. In my company, the only full squads were the weapons squads. The norm was a seven-man squad. Therefore, the TTP that my company used in employing the shotgun is as follows. In a stack, the breach man was the last numbered man (Figure 1).

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The breach man carried the shotgun in addition to his primary weapon, the M249 SAW. Room clearing is a precision drill, and neither the SAW nor shotgun are precision weapons. In this case the breach/ shotgun man stands to the opposite side of the door that the clearing team is stacked on. Depending on the direction of travel and which way the door opens, the breach man may stand at the front of the stack, moving after he breaches the door. Holding the shotgun at a 45-degree angle in relation to the door jam and away from his body, the breech man fires rounds into the door either at the door handle and deadbolt lock or the hinges. When firing at the doorknob, the point of aim should be into the door jam at the approximate location of where the plunger connects to the strike box. (See Figures 1 and 2).

IF only wishing it were so could make it so. If the cosmos worked that way, the sharks of the mainstream media and their remoras in the liberal blogosphere would have uncovered that Dick Cheney did in fact drunkenly shoot that Texas lawyer for threatening to expose the administration’s plan to abolish the Constitution, take over the world, and then drain away all of our vital bodily fluids. They would also have learned that Cheney shot the aged would-be whistleblower Annie Oakley-style, reserving his other hand for an amorous grope of a woman other than his wife in the unforgiving Texas brush. Had justice been served he would have been arrested, shirtless and screaming, at a Motel 6, like one of the perps on Cops. All of these things and so much more would have proven true if only NBC’s David Gregory could click the heels of his ruby slippers together.

Alas, it was not to be. You have to pity the poor SOBs. Conservatives seem to have a lot more success at wishing the seemingly outlandish into reality. We claimed that Bill Clinton was playing baron-and-the-milkmaid with an intern, and despite months of denials it turned out to be true. Of course, conservatives–at least some of them–also claimed that Bill Clinton was smuggling drugs into Mena airport and had had countless people, including Vince Foster, killed. These fantasies didn’t pan out (and sensible conservatives never indulged them). But all in all, we have a pretty good record of connecting the dots.

The best recent example is, of course, the Greatest Story Ever Told, in which Dan Rather claimed to have proven that George W. Bush had done something or other while in the Texas Air National Guard. The problem was that Rather’s proof lay in a bunch of made-up documents, their inauthenticity demonstrated largely by hordes of right-wing bloggers who took the time to sleuth out the typestyles of 30-year-old government-issue typewriters. Soon, the story fell apart like a road apple in a blender, as Dan Rather himself might say. But instead of admitting his mistake and begging for forgiveness like Henry in the snows of Canossa, Dan Rather, the Dean of Smug Liberal Journalists Who Refuse to Admit They Are Liberal, handcuffed himself to the drowning story and tried to swim to the sunny shores of FakeButAccuratonia. He was last seen on late-night C-SPAN pretending that the story was true because no respectable news outlet had proven it false (a standard which also proves that Dan Rather buggers goats and eats baby hamsters). One is loath to overstate the importance of Memogate, but even four out of five dentists agree this was simply the best thing ever to happen, ever.

Of course, conservatives don’t always put the dots together. Sometimes the dots just fall like manna from heaven. Jayson Blair, Howell Raines, Steve Glass, Sleepy, Snoozy, Bashful et al. on occasion just wander into our line of sight like a Texas lawyer coming up behind the vice president. Like Whittingtons in a barrel, the MSM have made themselves an easy target. And unlike poor Mr. Whittington, they’ve made themselves a deserving one as well.

Meanwhile, the Left’s pursuit of big game has mostly turned out to be a snipe hunt. There was that gay-escort guy who worked for the Talon News Service and who, we were told, would prove to be the Deep Throat of the Bush impeachment (we’ll stop that metaphor right there). There was the payola scandal which lost Armstrong Williams and Doug Bandow their syndicated columns. One isn’t slighting these men when one observes that their loss was hardly a crippling blow to the conservative media.

Against this backdrop, you can understand why the liberal bloggers were desperate not only to make hay out of Cheney’s misfortune but to spin that hay into gold. So for days on end, everyone–from the normally sober-sounding eminence grise of blogdom Josh Marshall to the jabbering Jacobins of the Huffington Post–mounted his own freelance Warren Commission investigation, studying the ballistic signatures of expensive Italian shotguns the way we all once mastered the arcana of the superscript “th” on the old IBM Selectric.

The mainstreamers behaved little better. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell lit a prairie fire of speculation that the veep is a drunkard who shoots at lawyers the way Elvis shot at TVs. Maureen Dowd and others insisted that Cheney had blamed Whittington for stupidly walking in front of him while he was yee-hawing with his shotgun. But this case could be made only if you deliberately, tendentiously, and dishonestly read every disclosed statement and fact in the most damning way possible. Which, of course, is the perfect job description for Maureen Dowd. When White House press secretary Scott McClellan noted that Cheney’s host, Katharine Armstrong, “pointed out that the protocol was not followed by Mr. Whittington when it came to notifying the others that he was there,” Dowd took this as obvious evidence that “the usual sliming” had begun. She then proceeded to argue that Cheney’s fowl-hunting techniques were directly analogous to his foreign and domestic policies. Seriously.

Remington is fancying up their classic police pump gun, the Model 870, with combat-style accessories, as the 870 Max.

Look to sell folding stocks for your customers’ existing home-defense pump guns. Choate remains a leader in this field and Brownells offers a wide selection.

The LaserMax LMS-1202 Tactical Laser/Light is designed for Remington’s 870, 1100 and 11-87. It has a white light unit on the right and a laser sight on the left, each riding between the barrel and magazine ahead of the slide handle or forend. It requires a shotgun with extended magazine for mounting.

Federal’s HST (Hydra-Shok Two) will get a lot of interest from your customers. A rangemaster from a large Northwestern police department recently told me his agency has dropped .45s and limited their officers to 9mm Glocks, all loaded with Federal HST 147-grain. Designed by Tom Burczynski, who brought us the original Hydra-Shok and PMC’s StarFire, the new bullet shares elements of both of those proven designs.

Hornady TAP (Tactical Application, Police) has been very well accepted in the law enforcement community. For 2005, Hornady has introduced a “civilian version.” Lay in a supply of TAP For Personal Defense. Your customers likely already are asking about it, motivated by advertising.

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Healthy Sales

The vibrant overall tone of the SHOT Show indicated that the many thousands of dealers in attendance were expecting a healthy year of sales. Join them!

Remington has formed a subsidiary, Spartan Gunworks by Remington, to handle a line of Russian-made “value-priced break-action shotguns.” Seventeen single-shot, side-by-side and over-and-under shotguns are part of the initial offering. According to Remington officials, the guns are primarily targeted for the mass-merchandising market.

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“There is a market for this product and we realize it’s a product that we can’t produce in the United States,” said AI D. Russo Jr., Remington’s manager, marketing communications. “The product is very well made and very safe. It has met all of our stringent safety standards and all the SAMMI safety standards. We put the guns through exhaustive testing and we’re rather conservative in making sure these firearms reflect the Remington standard.”

Handling the imports from Russia is European American Armory. There are three single-shot models in the Spartan line, including a youth model. There are seven models each of over-and-unders and side-by-sides, with two double-trigger models in each category.

Tristar Sporting Arms offers three models of shotguns designed for women: the Turkish-made Models 333L and 333SCL Spotting and the Italian-made Rizzini TR-L.

The Model 333L was introduced several years ago and set the design base for subsequent Tristar shotguns designed for women by a woman.

“When I worked at the Fajen Custom Shop, I took all the women’s measurements from all the custom guns we made for women and averaged them to get the measurements for this gun,” said Marry Fajen, former vice president of Reinhart Fajen.

The result is a shotgun that takes into account that women have longer necks, less shoulder mass and higher cheekbones than men. Its straight styling allows for this difference. The straight alignment with the barrel produces straight-back, into-the-shoulder recoil, instead of the up-and-back recoil women get when using a man’s stock. This lessens the amount of felt recoil.

Because women’s arms are usually shorter than men’s, the Tristar ladies shotguns sport a 13 1/2-inch length-of-stock pull compared to the 14 1/2-inch pull on men’s guns. Additional features include a 3-inch drop at the heel and 1/4-inch cast-off. This allows the female shooter to place the butt of the shotgun securely into her shoulder, and to get a sight picture without tilting her head.

The “toe out” feature moves the bottom edge of the stock buttplate 1/2-inch to the right, angling the toe away from the breast area and fitting it more naturally in a woman’s shoulder pocket without canting. This also allows women shooters to mount the gun in the same place every time.

Fajen also said the Tristar firearms are very easy to shorten.

“She can just remove the recoil pad and saw off an inch, if necessary,” Fajen said.

The Turkish 333SCL Sporting has the same features as the 333L, but includes “sporting” elements. These are an 11mm sporting rib with target bead, sporting recoil pad, elongated forcing cones, ported barrels and four CT-4 extended stainless choke tubes. The 333L and 333SCL Sporting come in 12 and 20 gauge.

The Italian-made TR-L is of the same design and is also available in 12 and 20 gauge. The TR-L sports a semi-fancy walnut stock, 3-inch chambers, choke tubes, auto ejectors and a ventilated 10mm rib.

Fajen said that despite not having the time to promote the ladies guns as much as she would like, they’ve been selling relatively well.

“When I present them, or a lady shoots the gun, they really like them,” she added.

The 2006 SHOT Show proved once again the firearms industry is a hotbed innovation and adaptation. New designs, new materials, it all came together in the Remington booth this year.

The most difficult of all shotguns to design is a semiautomatic. It has to feed, fire, extract and eject reliably light loads and heavy loads–standard 2 3/4″ shells, 3″ shells and increasingly, those 3 1/2″ Roman candles–and do it all without a hiccup and without beating itself into a pile of worn out and broken parts.

It has to be light without dishing out punishing levels of recoil. It has to be simple and easily disassembled by its owner because no gun accumulates more carbon, unburned power, and general gunk than a semiauto.

It’s really a marvel of engineering and firms like Remington, Browning, Winchester, Mossberg, Beretta, Benelli and Franchi have kept us well supplied with new and interesting models for decades.

When it comes to new semiautos, the year 2006 belongs to Remington. Their engineers really outdid themselves. Their new creation is called the 105CTi.

100th Anniversary

If the model designation sounds a little arcane, it is. The “1″ is Remington’s model prefix for autoloading shotguns as well as signifying their first new autoloader of the 21 st century. The “05″ stands for the year of design, 2005, which is also the 100th anniversary of Remington autoloading shotguns. The “C” and the “Ti” are the symbols for Carbon and Titanium in the Periodic Table of Elements. This is a high-tech smoothbore coupled with 21st century nomenclature.

I had an opportunity to shoot the 105CTi for a full morning on the skeet ranges of Nellis Air Force Base and I haven’t been more excited since the day I first handled a Remington 1100 and a Browning Double Auto.

In fact, if I had to draw an analogy to describe the 105CTi, it would be it’s as lively, light and well balanced as a Twelvette Double-Auto and as smooth and soft to shoot as an 1100.

Tour De Force

The engineering incorporated in the 105CTi is state of the art. To keep weight to a minimum and overall lines slim, the receiver is crafted from skeltonized Titanium. You wouldn’t know it because the Titanium is encased in a very eye-appealing, attractive, textured carbon-fiber shell.

The second big surprise is the 105CTi is an ambidextrous bottom feeder/ejector. No, there is no side port to collect weeds, seeds or rain, sleet and snow. You don’t have to worry about dumping hot cases down your friend’s back when in a duck blind, plus the first shell loaded is automatically fed into the chamber.

The trigger is the best Remington has ever put on an autoloader. It features a roller sear and is factory adjusted between 3 1/2 and 4 pounds. Have you noticed how trigger pull-weights are getting lighter and more adjustable across the industry? You bitched, they listened.

The new bolt is interesting. There’s a rotating locking ring just behind the bolt face so the bolt reciprocates and feeds in a straight line plus all internal parts are slick with an electroless nickel and Teflon finish. The tang of the bolt fits into an oil-filled cylinder, or rate reducer, housed in the butt stock. It regulates bolt velocity when shooting either 2 3/4″ or 3″ shells and reduces felt recoil.

In fact, recoil reduction in this 7-pound, 12-gauge gun is one of its outstanding qualities. It’s easy on your shoulder. Not only does the rate reducer smooth out recoil impulses, the concentric gas system is simple and lightweight, the barrel is overbored (.735″) and incorporates a long forcing cone. Finally, there’s a contoured Limb Saver-type R3 recoil pad screwed to the butt.

Fitted with either a 26″ or 28″ barrel, the 105CTi is fitted with one more hightech item–a lightweight, twin bead, ventilated rib made from carbon and aramid fibers. The aviation industry has really had an impact on modem firearm design. Look for the 105CTi at your dealers by the time you read this.

Other Treasures

Benelli introduced the ultra, “Ultra Light” autoloader–a 6-pound, 12-gauge gun for those whose “average hunting day is measured in miles.” Marlin’s L.C. Smiths looked better than ever. Kimber’s new seven-pin sidelock O/U, the Marias, was gorgeous. Beretta addressed the youth and smaller stature markets with the 3901 Target RL autoloader. The gun’s stock adjusts down to a 12″ length-of-pull combined with a cast off/on and comb height adjustments. Savage will be importing a new line of double guns. Winchester’s new Super X3 was loaded with bells and whistles. Browning’s latest Cynergy offerings include 20- and 28-gauge models. The Guerini booth was always filled. All in all, 2006 is turning out to be a great year for shotgunning!

Spanish shotgun manufacturer ComLanber S.A. has formed Lanber USA, headquartered in Blakely, Ga., to provide distribution, service and marketing for its line of over-and-under and semiautomatic shotguns.

The new U.S. facility will import and service Lanber over-and-under Models 2065, 2081, 2082, 2085, 2087 and the Sporting Clays Model 2097. Also available are the Lanber semiautomatics in Models 2532, 2533 and 2534. All Lanber shotguns are warranted for five years and are now available for immediate delivery to U.S. dealers.