The reason for those drastic Ithaca combs seem obvious to me. The shooter wants to shoot with his head up but does not want to just touch his chin to the stock; he wants his cheek to be against something, so they just raise the comb and get the best of both worlds. He doesn't have to cram his head down on the stock and peek out the corner of his eye. He has an upright head, Churchill style, yet has a good consistent cheek rest.
I think that this concept of "modern dimensions" in shotgun stocks, as if shotguns have undergone some Darwinian evolution process that has rendered them better is off the mark. Seems the old guys with their 3"-4" drops shot high scores and won championships. I think it's the shooter not the gun that wins at this game and that any skillful shooter can likely adjust, within reason, to most any stock if they pay attention to the details of what works and what doesn't and is willing and able to adjust methodology to match a stock dimension. I've become more comfortable with stocks with 2-3/4"-3" drop and now have to make sure I blank the bird on rising shots and straight on high incomers. No problem; I just have to make sure I do it and down they come. If someone hands me a flat stocked trap gun, as someone did in Denver last winter, I can shoot while I can still see the bird. It's up to me, not the gun. Will I be burned at the stake for this opinion???
Murphy might be on to something also, with the changing to having to hit them all to win. Could be that the blanking of the small fast clay targets method used with a stock with lots of drop could cause misses, that's it's better to always be able to see and track the bird... and with a clay, the bird is much smaller than a pheasant... so flatter stocks improved scores in what has become a highly competitive game.
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