Winchester’s Model 12 Shotgun.
I will never be able to look at a Model 12 Winchester shotgun without thinking of him. He was tall and lanky, he was one of those guys that seemed all disjointed and clumsy, but he wasn’t. This guy could walk in the mountains all day and he did not seem to tire. His long legs gave him a stride that was seemingly impossible to keep up with. When I was a boy, I have a distinct memory of following him and I was almost always running, running to catch up. I can see him ahead of me, a Model 12 casually resting on his shoulder as he would disappear behind some big oak or tangle of brush. I guess he waited for me at times; he never left me in the woods.
He was truly one of a kind. I used to call him my hunting uncle, he was a friend of my fathers but not blood kin. I inherited him from my Dad and after a few years I was allowed to venture into the grouse and turkey woods with him even if Dad couldn’t make it that day. It’s funny how kids see things in the world. At the time I never questioned how he was able to spend so much time in the woods with me and a Model 12 shotgun. He didn’t seem to have a regular job, a wife and family, or any of the other things which would keep most people from going hunting whenever they wanted. I never asked him about any of this, I just wanted to go hunting; he did too, so we went. Things were much simpler then.
We had ruffed grouse in my part of the world back then, in numbers far exceeding what we have now. He always had good dog, either a skinny pointer or cat footed setter with a bloodied tip on its tail and Mister, let me tell you, they were some kind of deadly. I’m sure he missed sometimes but I can’t remember it. If there was more than one bird on a flush or he needed a second shot I could hear the cha-chank of the action between rounds, but it was lightning fast. He did all of this with a battle worn Winchester Model 12 that had an action smooth as newly churned butter.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would ever be able to shoot like him.
He was a Model 12 man all the way. He had other shotguns, lots of them, he had a house full of guns, but the Model 12 Winchester was his hands down favorite. “Finest pump gun ever made,” I can hear him say when he would catch me handling one of his collection. This man who was way larger than life to me as a kid held the Model 12 as possibly the greatest shotgun ever made. Was it? I don’t know, you will have to be the judge.
The Man from Utah and Beyond. Many discussions on the history of a lot iconic firearms start with John Moses Browning. At the risk of stating the obvious Browning was a certifiable genius in firearm design whose name is linked to dozens of well-known guns including the Colt 1911 pistol, the Browning A5 shotgun, the Winchester Model 1894 lever action rifle, and the Model 1918 Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR), to name only a few.
Shotgun history lore holds that Winchester wanted John Browning to design a repeating shotgun and Browning wanted to go with a pump action model. Winchester at the time believed they needed to stay with a lever action gun as this was their trademark, so Browning gave the world the Winchester 1887 shotgun. The 1887 did OK but had some demons in the form of functioning issues and Winchester relented and gave John Browning the go ahead to work on a pump action shotgun. Browning whipped out the Winchester Model 1893 in short order and this gun was soon replaced by the Model 1897, a solid, tank like shotgun that sold for over 60 years.
Some sources give John Browning all of the credit for the Winchester Model 12 shotgun, but the real daddy of the Model 12 was a fellow working for Winchester by the name of Thomas Crossley Johnson.
C. Johnson went to work at Winchester at the tender age of 23 and worked there almost 50 years accumulating 125 patents on firearms including the Model 21 double barreled shotgun and the Model 12. Johnson took the basic idea for Browning’s 1897 pump gun and reworked it to give us the most elegant, streamlined shotgun seen up to this point. What T. C. Johnson did, in a stroke of genius differing from Browning, was to do away with that cotton pickin’ exposed hammer on the Winchester Model 1897.
The Model 97 had many fans and still does, but these were the ones that had learned to keep their thumb out of the way of the slide which moves reward from the receiver to cock the gun as the action is worked. For this reason, some dubbed the Model 97 the “thumb buster” and although most shooters only made this mistake once, T. C. Johnson knew there was a better way.
The Perfect Repeater. Johnson worked his magic and developed an internal hammer inside a streamlined receiver made from a single billet of forged steel. The internal parts of the action were all hand fitted and machined to precise specifications. This gave the Model 12 its reputation for a smooth action, probably unrivaled to this day. While the internal workings of the Model 97 were no slouch, the Model 12 action is stronger in that the bolt locks directly into the receiver. The safety is located on the front of the trigger guard where it should be as the finger of the shooter naturally rests there, not on the rear of the trigger. The trigger pull on a Model 12 is superior to any pump gun offered today, something most shooters don’t think about.
Most Model 12 shotguns produced had no trigger disconnector. This means like its predecessor the Model 97, it could be “slam fired”. This meant by depressing and holding the trigger a round can be fired every time the action is worked. Other than a combat situation, the actual practicality for this type of firing may be questionable but a skilled shooter can slam fire a Model 12 faster than most auto loading shotguns.
When the Model 1912 made the scene in 1912 (shortened to “Model 12” in 1919) it soon became the darling of hunters, trap and skeet shooters, and shotgunners in general. Remember up until this point most people were shooting double barrel shotguns; the age of the repeating shotgun was just starting. The Model 97 had been around a while but when shooters saw the graceful lines of the Model 12 compared to the homely old thumb buster ’97 it was love at first sight. The Model 12 seduced many a shooter and did so for the next 46 years. The Winchester sales people dubbed it “The Perfect Repeater” and most sportsman and shooters believed it.
For reasons that are not really clear the first year the Model 1912 shotgun was produced only in 20 gauge. In 1913 it became available in 12 and 16 gauge and in 1934 a 28-gauge version was added. (If you find a 28-gauge Model 12 you had better buy it or I will) If you find a .410 Model 12 you had really better buy it because Winchester never made one. Winchester engineer William Roemer designed a perfectly scaled down version of the Model 12 for the .410 bore, it was christened the Model 42 and produced from 1933-1963 in Field, Deluxe, and Skeet models. A Model 42 Winchester is a thing of beauty, and I always thought any man (or woman) shooting skeet with a Model 42 had a certain sense of style. The Model 12 man from my youth had one Model 42 he let get away from him in a trade and I think he regretted it to the grave.
The total list of all available models and variations that the Model 12 was available in can boggle the mind of the most ardent Model 12 aficionado. Field guns were offered in 12, 16, and 20 gauges with full, modified, and improved cylinder choked barrels, screw in chokes had made the scene by the late 1950’s and Winchester offered them in the way ahead of its time Model 59, but that is another story. Trap and Skeet guns, Deluxe Pigeon Grades, and Super Field Grades were all there to lust after. Among the variations available, Model 12’s could be ordered with a Cutts Compensator or a Poly Choke, they were ugly as hell, but they shot like a house on fire. Barrels on Model 12’s were Winchester Proof Steel and made in standard blue, stainless and nickel steel. You have to figure a man carrying a Model 12 with a nickel steel barrel is not to be trifled with.
By the middle 1950’s a standard order Model 12 had an MSRP of $93.85. That was with a plain barrel, no rib; it weighed right at seven- and one-half pounds and had a very pretty American Walnut stock and forearm. The Pigeon Grade VR Trap Gun Model at about the same time sold for $260.00, the most expensive Model 12 in its day. Try to find one for that now.
Like the Model 97, the Ithaca Model 37, and others the Model 12 had a long run with the military starting in World War I all the way into the Vietnam era. Model 12 shotguns for the military became known as Trench Guns and were supplied with heat shields on the barrel and bayonet lugs. Can you imagine troops in trench warfare slam firing a Model 12? A few years later they could have been back in Kansas pheasant hunting with the same gun.
The Model 12 era really ended in 1950 when Remington trotted out the Model 870 pump gun. The very things that made the Model 12 what it was, the machined, hand fitted inner workings of the shotgun, made it too expensive to produce. This was a new age of stamped parts and lower production costs. The Model 12 was discontinued as a production gun in 1964, and the world tilted a little on its axis.
Larry Case www.gunsandcornbread.com