16ga.com ~ View topic - ND Waterfowl Non-Resident Opener

Pictures from my ND non-res opening weekend results:

[url=https://imgur.com/t73e1H2]

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[url=https://imgur.com/cgfse85]

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All taken with the famous "bottom of the duckboat special" Model 12 16 gauge. Not a pretty gun (you're seeing the good side!), but it eats everything you can feed it. Shots were fairly long, especially the geese. One bunch of geese hit me but shy-ed away to my left. I knocked down 3 with 3 shots. However, the first was hit too far back. He folded but recovered somewhat. He never made it back up into the flock, but sailed into the very lush reeds we have in these high-water times, and I never found him. The 2nd and 3rd shots produced birds DOA. Big geese, too -- 12 pounders. I was mostly after ducks, because I enjoy eating them more than geese, so the second day I got my 6 ducks, two greenheads, one canvasback, one gadwall and two shovelers, in about an hour and a half of pass-shooting, and hit the road.

I shot somebody else's handloads. Shocked

A friend bought them for me at an auction for a price so low I'm embarassed to say. There were a lot of shells -- 3700 plus total -- about 2500 lead loads, all with nickel or copper plated shot, and about 1200 non-tox. About a third of that non-tox was factory loaded Hevi-Shot, the rest handloaded Hevi-shot, bismuth and ITX-13. Whomever loaded these shells must have really been "into it". Most are in new primed Cheddite hulls. I've disassembled examples of most loads to verify them. They are loads similar to those found in Hodgdon data. The guy labeled every shell with it's load using a round sticker on the base of the hull -- yes, every shell! Some shells have multiple sizes of shot in them. I suppose the guy reached the end of his non-tox shot supplies in each size, so he mixed them up and loaded the rest. I shot all these birds with shells containing a mixture of #6 and #4 Hevi-Shot. That stuff really reaches out.

The gun is an old Model 12 16 ga. from the mid '20's -- a 2 9/16 chambered gun. I personally machined the front edge of the ejection port forward to the position it has on the 2 3/4 inch Model 12's I have -- looks great doesn't it -- not like some of those "round front" port jobs seen in the usual "gun bodger" conversions. I had Mike Orlen extend the chamber to 2 3/4 inches, extend the forcing cones and take the choke out to approx IC -- I don't recall the exact constriction right now, but I can check if you really want to know. I had the gun done up this way specifically to shoot shells of any length and shot of any hardness. Judging by the number of shot strikes on birds at a distance when I was "on", it still seems to shoot mighty tight patterns at range with hard non-tox shot. It's still a great choke for upland shooting with lead or bismuth, too. The loads I used for this hunt were 34 grams of shot (1.2 oz.) over 25 grains of Longshot using Cheddite primers in Cheddite cases, employing the Ballistic Products BP1680 non-tox wad with whatever extra filler was needed. Most crimps were quite low, so I "improved" them.

Cheers!
Tony

P.S. By the way, as I empty these shells I will have more 16 gauge hulls than I know what to do with, so I will send them out to 16 Gauge Society Fellows free -- just pay postage -- USPS flat rate boxes are best. I have already given away quite a few, but I have some more, I don't know just how many at the moment. Most, but not all, will be once fired Cheddite 70 mm (2 3/4 inch) hulls, though some are 65 mm (2 9/16 inch) and I have separated them. The fellow that loaded all these shells put most of them in those white 25-round paper boxes you can get from BPI or Precision. I think I have about 30 of those empty boxes so far, and they are also free except for postage. I'm not always in MN (where the shells and boxes are) in the winter, so PM me if you want to make an arrangement.

I still have some of the Hevi, Bismuth and ITX-13 handloads to sell, too, but I don't like shipping the stuff. PM me about that if you're near enough to the Twin Cities to pick them up.

Nice going!

That's about the same gun I shoot 95% of the time, except I have Briley chokes, usually use MOD, and mine's near the other end, 1.930,000 something serial.
I smear linseed oil into the wood after each season and wouldn't ever even consider a reblue or resto'...

We open ina couple of weeks, Cannot Wait..

Joined: 30 Sep 2019 Posts: 145 Location: Colorado

Tony, thank you. I will gladly take the boxes and the hulls.
PM sent.

Member Joined: 31 Aug 2005 Posts: 1257 Location: Nebraska

Yes KGB, the reciever was stripped and then securely clamped to the bed of a CNC mill belonging to a friend of mine. (I did this before I had my own mill, which is not CNC, by the way.) The receiver sides are a good reference surface. The receiver was of course blocked up from the table to clear the rounded features at the front and rear of the action/frame. If I remember correctly, I used a 3/8 inch ball-end tool. The lower front radius of the opening is 3/16 inch, I think. You can check that easily. It's the same on the 12 gauge and early 2 1/2 inch 20's and 2 9/16 inch 16's. After you make the cut, you can easily see why Winchester went to about a 3/8 or 1/2 inch radius on that corner when they opened the small gauge Model 12 frame up to handle 2 3/4 inch shells in both 16 and 20 -- the lower front corner of the bolt is slightly exposed with the 3/16 inch radius cut. It doesn't bother a thing, though. Frankly I like the resulting "square" look of the port. It looks just like that of the 12 gauge Model 12's.

Anyway, the upper edge of the port is a vertical cut (parallel to the sides of the action frame). It's front radius (the upper front corner of the port) is also that same 3/16 inch radius. So . . . "all ya gotta do" is put that 3/8 inch ball-end tool into the port perpendicular to the side of the frame (put the frame flat on the table of a vertical axis mill, with the lower edge of the port aligned with the axis of the table -- the X axis), touch off to orient the side of the tool to the lower edge of the port, and then touch the ball end of the tool to find the surface of that upper port line that is parallel to the side of the action. Then, keeping the ball-end of the tool at the height of that upper edge of the port, start making small cuts (I used .010" per pass) starting into the lower front corner of the port, then moving up the front of the port all the way past that vertical surface of the top edge of the port. You can also cut with the tool end lower than that surface of the upper edge of the port, but you''ve got to raise the tool to that height when you cross that edge, so be careful. Get the tool to the right height and he radius of that upper front corner also blends right in like Winchester did it. You only need to move the front of the port forward about .060 to .065 inch, as I recall. I measured my 2 3/4 inch chambered 16 gauge Model 12's and matched that. Any more than that, and it gets ugly. Most of the "gun bodger" jobs take way too much off. No need for that unsightly kind of work. Incidentally, I found that the port length of the 2 3/4 inch guns is the same as that of the 2 9/16 16 gauge gun (or on the 2 1/2 in the 20 gauge). Winchester cut the port the same length, but simply move it forward a little. That's the same thing they did on the 12 gauge when they went to the Heavy Duck 3 incher. Needless to say, they only moved the port on the Heavy Duck that same little bit, NOT a quarter of an inch, or even close to it, but I digress.

Now, after making this cut, you will sit back proud and think the job is done. Unfortunately it is not, as I found out. And now I know why the "gun bodgers" think they need that big ugly round radius often seen in the front edge of the port. Those small gauge Model 12's were designed for 2 9/16 inch shells maximum. Even with the port moved forward the same as a 2 3/4 incher, modern day 70mm hulls will catch on the front edge. So why do they work in my 2 3/4 inch Model 12 16's?? If you look, Winchester cut a little taper from the ejector slot in the chamber ring back to the front edge of the port. The front edge of the port still stays straight, but the mouth of the empty shell has just enough clearance to be ejected. If you measure old 2 3/4 inch hulls from U.S. manufacturers, they are often 1/16th or 3/32nds inch shorter than 2 3/4. Modern day Euro hulls of 70mm might not always come out of a 2 3/4 inch Model 12. If you have a good ejector spring, a sharp extractor, and shuck the gun hard, they'll usually come out, but it is marginal. Anyway, they will not if all you do is the above mentioned cut. I duplicated Winchester's little chamfer job with very careful use of a Dremel too. My surface finish is looks better than what Winchester put on my 2 3/4 inch gun. So now the port looks like it should and the gun works like a charm.

It would be possible to put the big radius on the lower front corner of the port, but unless you moved the front edge of the port further forward (too far -- take a look) it would not clean up that original 3/16 inch radius. It would not look good, and it would gain one nothing. If you took the front port edge further, you'd probably expose the rim of the cartridge when it was in the chamber. Nothing wrong with that, but it might be hard on the left extractor, and it would be aesthetically unpleasant.

Cheers!

P.S. -- What sorta blows me away is how they got this action to eject shells when they made it a 28 gauge, as the first 28 gauge chamberings for the Model 12 were 2 7/8 inch. I'll have to give that a close look to see what they did to get the front of the hulls to clear the front of the ejection port. I need to check some old hulls (paper in those days -- I have some), but I bet they weren't actually a full 2 7/8 inches long.