Decades ago in Manitoba I used an Ithaca Mag10 to shoot trap.
This was on a bet: the owner had just got the gun and he was sure I'd be reeling so badly from the "brutal recoil" that I'd either give up, or that I'd have such a flinch I wouldn't be able to break enough birds to win the bet.
I can't recall how many clay pigeons I had to break to win the bet, but I think it was 19 or 20. Anyway, I
did win the bet (good thing I did -- the looser had to pay for a bottle of beer
and the box of factory ammo which was bloody expensive!
Thanks to the automatic action, I didn't find the recoil was much worse than the very fast loads I used in my Winchester 101 3 inch O/U 12 ga. These loads were published by Ballistic Products and exceeded every factory load available at the time. These loads loosened up my poor 101 over two seasons of heavy shooting, but as an impoverished graduate student, I only had 2 shotguns (I also had a featherweight Ithaca SKB S/S 20 gauge for grouse). I lived on snow geese, Canada geese, mallards, canvasbacks, and sandhill cranes.
A 10ga auto or pump would stood up much better, but the Winchester 101 was what I had at the time. I knew what I was doing to it, and have no complaints about the Winchester 101 - I pushed it beyond the normal limits of a double-barreled gun.
John
