Thanks Frank...I have always suspicioned that it was a replacement. If so,, it was done a loooong time ago, by a good stock guy. It has an age and wear appropriate Hawkins pad also. Checkering wear, finish color etc. are consistent for and aft.

See what Dr. Bob says. Frank, I had a DS 20 with a pistol grip and fluted Lefever grip cap, An LAC buttplate( not supposed to have those either), twin beads on the rib, and the fore arm had the Lefever escucheon and metal forearm tip. Always figured it was put together after being bought out by Ithaca.

TxHuntermn,

The short answer is..."anything is possible." While I dont think any of us have seen one, oddities do exist, particularly if a gun was assembled by Ithaca.

A dead giveaway wwould be the trigger guard, as ColdSping pointed out. Lefever straight grips came with a very long guard that extended way down the bottom of the buttstock.

As an aside, and as a separare matter, I would say that if it were an Ithaca assembled gun, it would be very uncommon. My personal belief is that the generational variations in Lefevers have drawn some people into way over-stating the likely number of Ithaca assembled guns. The topic has been debated at length by us LACA guys, and I wont hijack the thread and/or bore people by going in why I think this. I just thought it worth pointing out.

If the trigger guard is right, the best "guess" is your DS came original that way, and the gun is a unique oddity. Secondarily, finding an original "donor" straight grip stock WITH its correct trigger guard would be about as unlikely as yhe gun having been originally made that way.

NDG

Of course a possible 3rd alternative could be that someone found an original trigger guard, and then had a straight grip stock made to fit. In that case, unless they perfectly recreated the known contours of original stocks, it might be apparent from the looks of it.

If you post picks of that gun we might be able to come to a solid crowd guess.

NDG

The Hawkins recoil pad didn't come out until well after the last side-plate Lefever was assembled.

I have owned an original 20g DS with straight grip.

There were not many made, that is for sure.

Brian, did it have a long trigger guard?

Yes. It did.

i too have a lefever ds 20 ga with straight stock and long trigger guard looks original to me...charlie

Charlie,

Wow, that's great! If you could share some pics it would be much appreciated!

- NDG