I just finished a long-term project and am going bird hunting with it.
It is a Savage-imported Valmet Model 333 20 guage Skeet that was REALLY butchered by its previous owner. He/she put on a "custom" stock that was apparently his/her ideal.
It had a squared profile beavertail forend that was about 4" wide at the bottom (where your hand goes), with a profile like a 2x4". The buttstock had a very tight pistol grip with a heavy steel grip cap and a rather low comb. Buttstock wood is very fancy(and therefore very heavy)figured walnut. Grain is laid out well--figure is all in the back end away from the tang and grip.
Worse, because wood can be massaged, is that he/she disabled the auto safety and the ejectors by removing key parts. And then didn't keep 'em!
LONG story short, I whittled the wood back to decent field dimensions, found the ejector and safety parts (only took two years!) and then found a guy who could/would/did fit them (another year). Ahlman's checkered the finished stock with fairly coarse "skip-a-line" checkering that you can actually take hold of, and looks a little like the original checkering.
So now I got another "Savage" to hunt birds with. I CAN break clays with it, maybe I can kill birds. I'll know on the 18th with any luck; gotta quail and chukar date. Takin' my 12 guage 333 for backup.
This gun cost me about $400 for the gun and new parts, around $300 for gunsmithing/checkering, and a couple of hundred hours of searching and elbow grease. But it's "almost a Savage," and a beauty. Looks new (it was nearly unfired when I got it).
