The Ithaca is a 1927 NID4E that was factory ordered as a 2 3/4" 12ga. two barrel set. The order information I obtained from the Cody Museum letter stated it was ordered as a 24" barrel choked 0/0 with a spare 30" barrel choked 4/4. It was ordered with a straight grip stock. Somewhere along the line a previous owner must have broken or decided to replace the original stock with another straight grip stock and broke that one in half at some point. The second stock was replaced with the current stock you see and was made by Chris Dawe of Stillwater Restorations. He told me he tried to talk the owner into keeping it a straight grip stock but he said "what the customer wants the customer gets" so sadly the original trigger guard was shortened and part of the hand engraved serial # drilled through to accommodate the shorter reshaped guard for the pow grip. As well someone at some point messed with the 30" bbl set and cut them back to 28" leaving about 1/2" of choke section micing out to .004 & .005 constriction and reblued both sets poorly. Chris refinished the bluing on the barrels, trigger guard and forend irons properly and had a fellow he collaborates with redo the CCH. All this was done w/o any harm being done to the original engraving so none of it needed recutting. So its not a great gun in terms of collector value but it is one heck of a nice shooter which is what I want in any of my guns. And shoot wonderfully it does! Using 1oz bismuth #4-5 &/or #6 1200 fps it is so soft shooting and deadly at distances to 30-35 yds it really amazes me. It points, swings and shoots so sweet! It feels like you just cant miss with it even when I do! Lol

Here it is after I received it back from Chris and in the field...

What kind of geese
 

Interestingly enough, or not interesting at all if you don't care to know about it, there are several different subspecies of lesser Canada goose. When I lived in Vancouver Washington and hunted geese across the Columbia river in Oregon, you actually had to pass a test about the 7 or 8 subspecies before you could get a license. They were defined as the Dusky, the Westerner, the Aleutian, the Taverner, the Cackler, the Richardson's, and the Lesser. The big focus was on the Dusky, which was limited to one per season as I recall. The Aleutian is kind of cool because it has a white collar where the neck joins the body. There are actually more subspecies depending where you are in North America. Anyway, back to the beautiful Ithaca subject gun; I've said it before, I'm in awe of Chris Dawe. What a craftsman.

Wonderful gun, Frank. I caught the Ittaker bug a couple years back myself. Bought a Grade 3 Super Ten from a member's ad on this site, AIR.

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That is a beauty!