By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
As shotguns go, it wasn’t much on the “eye candy” scale, but how I got it so many years ago always delighted me; a light, fast-swinging 20-gauge Stoeger Uplander with fixed chokes and double triggers.
Ask me if I ever looked a gift horse in the mouth!
Essentially, its previous owner was so darned mad that he couldn’t seem to hit anything with it prompted him to tell me he was going to “throw it in the trash.” Being lightning quick on the uptake, I promptly said, “Heck, I’ll take it!” And the deal was struck.
Call it a bit of savvy about side-by-side doubles in the hands of someone who had spent a lifetime shooting pumps and semi-autos, and instead of dealing with a single barrel, he had apparently been disadvantaged by having to figure out that S/S gun barrels are “regulated” to put their shot patterns on top of one another at a specific distance, whether, say, at 25 or maybe 40 yards. (I’ve never bothered to pattern this shotgun because, well, I’ve been shooting birds with it out to 20-25 yards ever since firing the first shot at live game, and it puts game in the bag.)
Aside from that, I examined the ammunition he’d been using and it was somebody’s reloaded junk, of which I fired one round and never touched again. It was, to be polite, dreadful stuff with bad crimping and in some of the shells, the shot charges were loose enough that I concluded whoever put it together didn’t use the right wads or was trying to scrimp on his lead pellets. It was no wonder that this fellow was disappointed.
Instead, with the Stoeger tucked behind the seat if my pickup, I promptly beat feet to my favorite gun shop, bought three boxes of shells—all No. 6s and one each from Federal, Remington and Winchester—and stopped by the local gun range just long enough to break a few clay targets. Then it was home to a bath of Hoppe’s No. 9, a quick replacement of someone’s genuinely crummy aftermarket (and decades old, it seemed) recoil pad with a Decelerator from Pachmayr, and a look at the calendar to mark down the days until that year’s grouse opener.
That autumn, while on a deer hunt in Washington’s Okanogan County, I put that little scattergun to work. I had turned onto the genuinely beat-up remains of a dirt road which clearly had not been maintained in years, and found myself following a fat blue grouse which must have thought it could outrun my 4X4 pickup. Uhh, nope!
I bailed out of the cab, pulled the Stoeger out of its case, slipped in a couple of shells and as the grouse suddenly remembered it could fly, I clobbered it at the take-off at about 15 yards.
But that’s not the end of the story. About an hour later, I was back at literally the same spot, and found another blue grouse trotting down the same track, almost in the same groove in the dusty road, as the first guy. Out came the shotgun again, in went a couple of shells, and sure as heck, this fool hen was genuinely as dumb as the other one, and ultimately just as dead. Bang! And that was my dinner for the next two nights; breasts wrapped in bacon, along with sliced potatoes and whatever else I could cook up.
Over the next several years, the Uplander definitely earned its keep. It has been on some interesting adventures, in all kinds of weather. I had to refinish the buttstock maybe a dozen years ago, removing the stain and allowing the lighter tone of the wood to come out. It has 3-inch chambers, though it gets a steady diet of 2 ¾-inch shells, either lead or steel—depending upon where I’m hunting—and I cannot say it has ever caused me a bit of trouble. It has extractors, not ejectors, but that doesn’t bother me. It cleans up fast.
My first good purchased-at-retail shotgun was a slightly used Beretta S/S in 12-gauge. It has double triggers, 28-inch barrels, a stock that fits like a glove, bores smooth as glass, and I have never missed a grouse with it. I purchased that gun when I was 19 and in my second year of junior college, for a price which would flabbergast some people today. Suffice to say, I got a really good deal when I told the guy behind the counter, “Well, gee, I’m not really keen on imported shotguns, maybe you’ve got a Fox or something?”
The old guy said something to the effect of “Look down those barrels, sonny, and raise it to your shoulder, see how it fits.”
I bought it with proceeds from a couple of paychecks, along with a box of shells. It’s been clobbering grouse, chukars and pheasants ever since.
But then I came into the 20-gauge Stoeger. It was lighter in weight, with shorter barrels, and in the brush it “strutted its stuff!”
All of this demonstrates that someone on a budget doesn’t need to feel left out. Stoeger’s Uplander series of shotguns is relatively inexpensive, compared to classier brand models, but I’ve always reasoned that the bird or bunny in the bag is not going to have a hissy fit about your gun.
And let’s face it. As a long-gone rich guy once told me, “We’re all broke at different levels,” so if you don’t have a wallet jammed with greenbacks, but there is something in the piggy bank for just such occasions, it is possible to score rather well with a shotgun that doesn’t come with a four-zero pricetag.
I checked online while writing this story, and discovered the Stoeger Uplander Field model in 12- or 28-gauge and .410 bore can be had for an MSRP under $600. The 20-gauge model, which is a compact, comes in at $499, according to the website, but prices are subject to change, so don’t hold me to it.
