By Nick Simonson

It happened more than a decade ago.  My wife won a 20 gauge over-under at our local Pheasants Forever banquet and gifted the featherweight shotgun to me.  In my hands, it felt tiny, but it snapped to my shoulder with a quickness and a natural flow unlike any other shotgun I had ever mounted.  It just felt right in the cool of the spring air as I mounted it outside my house when we returned from picking it up after the event.  After a few rounds of trap and a couple quick adjustments by the gunsmith later in the summer, the little 20 gauge became my go-to gun, and it has remained my number one in the safe since that autumn.

My biggest fear at the time, not being the most accurate shot, was that the gentleman’s gauge would not be as effective on the pheasants I was pursuing around my home in southwestern Minnesota. I would soon learn, however, that it wasn’t the gun that was responsible for putting the birds down, but rather the user and the combination of shells and the shiny extended chokes installed at the end of each barrel.  It was my first gun outside of the fixed barrel Wingmaster 870 12 gauge which I had inherited from my father, and with the new scattergun came a selection of four silver chokes in a bright orange box which helped gently guide me into learning more about patterning, pellet clouds, and just how my style of hunting impacted what shells I’d use and how I’d deploy them.

Behind my pointing labs, I started with an improved cylinder and a modified choke in the early goings of each pheasant season as the birds would get up relatively close in most cases, making the more open first barrel effective at nearer ranges and the follow-up shot from the second barrel a bit better when birds moved downrange.  I can still recall my first double with the gun in a drenching rain as two roosters rose from some soaked autumn sweet clover, ending my day with a two-bird Minnesota limit almost as quickly as my walk began.  In fact, had I just walked out to the spot instead of sneaking around for the wind, I might have been done in two minutes and not ten!

With my return to North Dakota, and a wider array of upland game, including sharptailed grouse, the gun stuck with me for those early season adventures.  The reduced weight of the sub-six-pounder made treks through the hills of the Missouri River breaks feel like a breeze, and soon the game in my pouches was the far heavier load to carry.  The same held true for return trips to northern Minnesota and the pursuit of ruffed grouse on a four-day-weekend each year, as the long walks through the woods only required a reset of the chokes to a skeet and improved cylinder setup for the closer-flushing thunderbirds. For pheasants, I settled into the early-season Improved Cylinder/Modified setup, and then a Modified/Improved Mod choke combination after deer season ended. The latter I special ordered in addition to the factory issued options.

Admittedly, a smaller gun isn’t for everyone.  There are those who like a bigger shell, a stronger payload and the comfort of something that might not kick as hard when deploying the more powerful ammunition available for upland game these days.  But for me the 20 gauge has worked, and has changed the way I hunt.  I know I may not be able to take an effective long poke at a far-flushing rooster, and that’s fine.  The limits which my little gun add to the experience of my hunt, and make those boundaries part of a game whose focus has changed significantly for me over the past 10 years, feel as acceptable as the crook between my chest and shoulder do on the stock of the gun. 

With each tailfeather in my cap, I’ve found I have less and less to prove to myself and the little gun I tote on each adventure.  In a matter of a couple years, I’ll likely reserve the shiny-capped barrels as a backup to my boys’ blasts, and that will be a satisfactory transition as well.  But as for now, another upland season is upon me and my reliable 20 gauge over and under, which despite a few scratches in the blue and a nick on the stock, shoots just as pretty as it did more than a decade ago and hopefully will again this fall, reinforcing the decision made and the turn to a different kind of challenge in the field.

Simonson is the lead writer and editor of Dakota Edge Outdoors.

Featured Photo: A Turn from Long Ago.  The author with a pair of Minnesota roosters after an early outing with his then-new-20 gauge. Simonson Photo.