ithaca shotgun

[grizzly]

My wife got me an Ithaca model 37 pump gun for Christmas this year . As a boy growing up just 10 miles from Ithaca all the old men who taught me about hunting owned one including my dad and that man shot lot of deer.i think they're one of the best pump guns made. i already own a 12 guage deerslayer but never had a birdshot barrel for it . so my wife found a used combo 37 with a 28 inch full choke vent rib and a 20 inch slug barrel it's in great shape and it was one of the guns that were made in Ithaca.i plan on making it my turkey gun it will only handle 2and3/4 inch shells so i'll have to do some pattern testing . here's my qestion the serial number has the letters MAG in front of the numbers i have never seen this before on an Ithaca do any of you know what the letters are for. Thanks for any info

[allaboutshooting]

My wife got me an Ithaca model 37 pump gun for Christmas this year . As a boy growing up just 10 miles from Ithaca all the old men who taught me about hunting owned one including my dad and that man shot lot of deer.i think they're one of the best pump guns made. i already own a 12 guage deerslayer but never had a birdshot barrel for it . so my wife found a used combo 37 with a 28 inch full choke vent rib and a 20 inch slug barrel it's in great shape and it was one of the guns that were made in Ithaca.i plan on making it my turkey gun it will only handle 2and3/4 inch shells so i'll have to do some pattern testing . here's my qestion the serial number has the letters MAG in front of the numbers i have never seen this before on an Ithaca do any of you know what the letters are for. Thanks for any info

First of all, congratulations. As I'm sure you know, you can determine the manufacuring date of your gun from the serial number. I know that ithaca would frequently put a prefix before a serial number to designate some special run. I do not see in any reference matarial the MAG prefix that your gun has however. In most cases MAG would probably refer to magnum. You can contact Ithaca directly and I'm sure they'd be able to tell you exactly what that means on your gun. Sorry I can't be of much help to you with this.

There may be someone else who frequents this forum who is much more knowledgeable of the Ithaca line and they may be of help as well.

At any rate, you have a fine gun and a piece of history. All my bsst to you ast you take it to the range and turkey woods next spring.

Thanks,
Clark

[WillowRidgeCalls]

As Clark stated, you best bet would be to get ahold of Ithica and find out just when that gun was made and anyother info about it. Years ago gun companys used to make certain guns for whatever the hunter was hunting, not like they are made today to handle all the mag loads. They would use different alloy in the recievers and barrels to handle the mag loads. It would be nice to know if that gun came with both barrels as a set, which might be why it has MAG on it to handle the heavier loads used for deer. It sounds funny, but back then that is how guns were made, to handle the loads that were shot out of them. If you hunted upland thats the gun you bought, where if you hunted waterfowl or deer you bought a gun that handled those loads. It depends on how old that gun is?

[grizzly]

Thank you both for the info. what research i done the gun was made in the early 80s and yes both barrels came in the same box it was sold as a combo ....wayne