I would like to think the original owners of these guns knew what ammunition they were made for and acted accordingly. But when they passed them on, most likely without the hang-tag they came with telling what shell to use they started digesting any old ammunition the owner could stuff in them. Our North American ammunition manufacturers offered 2 1/2-inch 20-gauge shells up to WW-II, but after WW-II only 2 3/4-inch 20-gauge shells were offered. I just measured the length of a fist full of nominally 2 3/4-inch loaded 20-gauge shells with the post WW-II pie crimp and got anywhere from 2.305" to 2.335" all would easily fit into that 2.375" chamber. Those shells could be anywhere from 2 1/4-dram equiv. 7/8-ounce loads to the maximum 1 1/8-ounce 2 3/4-inch Magnums. I suspect that the recoil forces of a steady diet of such shells from the late 1940s into the 1990s when we started worrying about such things did in the heads of a lot of vintage 20-gauge double's stocks.
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