I just snagged one from a favorite trading site , does anyone have experience with these? It is a High Standard make, and has the small poly choke, not the big spud on the end of the barrel...
A good, solid blue collar shotgun that they sold boatloads back when Sears was a huge sporting goods/firearms supplier (biggest in U.S.?). I see them at gun shows and they strike me as a lot of gun for the buck because they are from a bygone era and not viewed as a collectible.
I seem to recall reading that Sears owned the design or at least had a contract arrangement with High Standard for manufacturing. Don't know if parts interchange between the JC20 and Flight Kings, but they are at very least first cousins.
Most that I've seen were either plain barrel or had the Powerpac (their version of the Cutts). Don't know if the Polychoke was a standard offering. Back in the 50's and 60's the polychokes and Cutts were desirable. And they work!
I have a couple High Standards of the same vintage and they function 100%. Take yours out and shoot the heck out of it!
A friend of mine used one of these for many years for all his upland hunting in the Palouse Prairie in Eastern Washington when he had to give back a borrowed Winchester Model 12. He came to prefer it to the Winchester and thought the only thing wrong with it was that it wasn't a takedown.
Killed a boatload of phez, Huns, chukars, and "California" quail with it. I had fancier guns but didn't score any more with them than he did with that JC Higgins. Had no issues with it in the 7-8 years I hunted with him.
A sleeper, like many "mail order brand" guns.
I hunted the Palouse for a few years in early '80s, loved chasing Huns "chinks" chukar and quail, did some goose stalking too in the winter wheat... I finally got some time to mess around with the model 20 today, it was dirty but cleaned up, bore is VVG.
some surface freckling over all exterior, but I can't wait to shoot it, as mentioned it is a "barrel fixed to receiver" design, but the boresnake really made it shine.