So I decided to cruise the used gun racks at my local Cabela's after I got off duty today and came across what looks to be an older police variant of the M37 (18.5 in barrel/8 round mag with standard stock) in pretty good condition for about 350 bucks. Anyone here got any info on if this is a good deal and how well an M37 shapes up along side a Mossberg 500 or Remington 870 in terms of function?
Originally Posted by 1911guy
The Ithaca 37 was designed as a hunting shotgun, patterned somewhat after the Remington Model 31. The gun "shits where it eats"; i.e., loads and ejects from the same hole.
It is a relatively reliable arm… until you start feeding it a steady diet of buckshot and/or bear balls. The shell latches in this gun are weak; they WILL get battered into unserviceablity when you shoot a lot of heavy-recoiling shells in it; its just a question of how soon.
Also, due to its very light weight, it kills at one end and wounds at the other. Felt recoil is substantial with heavy loads.
A lot of cops have used a lot of them back in the day. Those who extol its virtues usually fall into one of two categories:
1. members of large agencies that had guns for patrol issue at the station/precinct/whatever. These were shot very little; they qualified with training guns maintained at the range. LAPD is an example.
2. cops who were issued one, but didn't shoot it much with buckshot/slugs.
We operated almost a thousand of them for many years. They were individually issued, and each trooper shot his issued one at in-service. By the time I got involved in firearms training, these guns were getting long in the tooth and had had a LOT of rounds through them. I cannot recall a single in-service session where at least one of them didn't go down (fail). We also had a couple of spectacular failures on the road; I haven't seen Ken (LSP552) around here recently, but I'm sure he remembers one particular incident in Concordia Parish in 1981. They're still talking about that one. My predecessor at the FTU made it his life's mission to replace them with 870s; I continued that mission until we finally got rid of the last of those pigs in the mid-90s.
My advice would be to tread VERY carefully. If the gun is indeed lightly used, then it should be good to go if you go easy on the buckshot and bear balls. The problem is, it gives no warning when a shell latch (or both of them) is about ready to puke on you. Also, the parkerizing on the police guns was quite shoddy; we had a constant problem with rust inside the magazine tubes, and combined with the metal followers, more than one trooper ended up with shells stuck in the tube. Maybe yours will be fine; I hope so. But as far as I'm concerned, they're only good for a fifty dollar gas card or whatever at a police buy-back extravaganza.
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Fair enough. I'll still probably snap it up if funds allow (planning a road trip to visit my family for the holidays), but more for a collector's piece as I'm a bit of a sucker for guns used in my favorite movies and The Terminator is very high on that list.
LSP972 has hit on the durability issues. My own experience with the 37 is pretty limited, but I found that the sheer fun of having no disconnector was more than offset by having no ejection port for emergency reloads. They are a blast to run fast while the mag lasts, but I don't see anything they do better than an 870 or 590.
LSP: I didn't ask the question, but thank you for that response. I had heard good things about the Ithaca and might have picked one up sometime. I now know better. By the way, I have no idea how one gets listed as an SME here, but you ought to be one. I thought I knew a thing or three about guns but your knowledge is encyclopedic. I learn something pretty much every time I read one of your comments.
I appreciate the flowers, but I'm far from an "expert".
I simply have been lucky enough to be in jobs where I got exposed to a whole bunch of different gun-related stuff.
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Which is pretty much what an expert is, I think.
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