Parker Skeet Guns

[J.B. Books]

I think it is amazing that the one of a kind Trojan Skeet Gun was featured on the cover of Outdoor Life. I do not think it was an accident but rather a coordinated early marketing effort in advance of the gun being released for sale, which it never was.

[Drew Hause]

Likely Pete. There seems to have been some...uh...coordination (collusion) of marketing between the makers and magazines.
A two-page spread appeared in the Feb. 1926 issues of National Sportsman and Hunting and Fishing, announcing “A New Sport for Shotgun Shooters” and a $100 prize for the best name for the new shooting game. The May 1926 issues announced the winner, Mrs. Gertrude Hurbutt of Dayton, Montana, and the new name "Skeet" from an old Scandinavian word for shoot. Remarkably, the Ithaca NID Skeet Special was advertised in the July 1926 National Sportsman, only 2 months after the game was named! Could the Ithaca Gun Co. have been tipped off in advance of the announcement in order to accelerate production of a designated skeet gun?
And why Ithaca? The L.C. Smith "Skeet Upland Special" wasn't introduced until 1928.