Home Forums Birds & Dogs Shotguns Red label 12 guage

Have the opportunity to to trade into a red label. I've wanted one since I was a teenager, friend has one that he says is unfired, bought while he was in the coast guard stationed Kodiak in 1996. It looks to be unfired, and I have no reason to doubt him. My issue is, after finally finding my holy Grail, I hear that recoil is terrible! The rifle I'm trading is worth somewhere around $1000. Am I better off keeping the rifle and buying something else or making the deal? Never handles a red label, just drooled over pics as a kid. Help me out

Why not just buy the Red Label, instead of 'something else'?......

I have a 12 ga. Red Label and I've shot it quite a bit, mostly for skeet and sporting clays. I don't find the recoil to be excessive, it's about the same as any other O/U shotgun I have shot. If it's unfired it's worth the $1,000. I paid that much for mine about 15 years ago. Mine had been bought by a fellow who passed before he could use it and his widow sent it back to the gun shop on consignment.

Nothing noteworthy about the recoil at all. Do not give this bullshit a second thought!

I had no interest in a Ruger over and under until a friend who managed a gun store got me to try a used one at the skeet range. (He is an accomplished enabler and has cost me a LOT of money over the years! :-)

The gun had extremely pretty wood, and I broke way above my normal score so I bought it and I've been shooting at at trap, skeet, ducks and geese for 28 or 30 years, including a LOT of very heavy goose and duck loads..

Zero problems and the gun locks up tight as ever.

One thing to be aware of: when I got my Red Label, the safety went on automatically every time you broke the gun to eject fired shells and reload. It was very easy to change this behavior though, just two little lumps to file off and you have a normal safety. Clearly Ruger designed the gun so that this could easily changed.

There is probably a YouTube video to show you what to do, but I figured it out by just looking -- it was before YouTube! :-) Send me a personal message if you can't find instructions and want me to try to remember and write them down for ya'!

John

Sincerely, if you decide to pass on this offer, please pm me.

An auto safety is for the most part standard on American made O/U and SxS field shotguns. Clearly if Ruger wanted one to have a choice of an auto or non-auto safety, they would have built in an override function. The fact you have to file off working parts of the shotgun clearly indicates they meant it to be an auto safety.

And if you are willing to instruct others in how to disable their intended safety mechanism, it would be wise for you to have a personal liability policy of at least 40million.

Mine is an old model gun. When i got it I had the auto safety disabled and the forcing cones extended.
Guess I better look into an insurance policy (laughing).

If the Red Label fits you the recoil will be fine. My Red Label does not fit me well and it hits my cheek during recoil, so it is not much fun. I have a Beretta 686 that does not give me any problems.

Since you didn’t alter you may be fine, then again since you know it was altered, maybe not.

Attorneys will arm wrestle in the judges chamber to prosecute situations like this. And he who laughs last,....

Wait, you did alter it. Best of luck.

Ten years ago I got a used 28" Red Label that I never shot well and got rid of a few years later.
Two years ago I got a used 30" Sporting Clays model, which I shoot very well. On the 1st round of skeet a friend said "that is your gun, don't bring any other gun!"
However, both guns went back to Ruger because the top barrel would not fire consistently. Just left a dimple on the primer. Seems to work fine now.

I had a 20 ga Red Label for years, some used to knock it with the sage words "It will break after 50,000 rounds!"
Heck, I probably shot it 500 rounds in 20 years' time. So I guess it still had 99% of it's life left when I let it go.

Just an update, I couldn't pass it up! The red label currently raises in my safe, right where it belongs!

I have several different brands of over/unders and the recoil of a Red Label is no more than any of the others. I think that gets repeated so much that people start to believe it. People either love Rugers or hate them. Don't worry about recoil or the fit.

Worry about fit, it is a factor in how you feel recoil. The worse the gun fit, the worse the gun will seem to recoil and the poorer one will shoot it. Don't be afraid to have the stock altered so you can shoot it better.

My take on the 12 ga Red Label is they had a period where there were an inordinate number of problems. That seemed to be in the mid to late-1990s based on the guns I saw at my club. Unfortunately, this was also the heydays for the Red Label which prevented it from becoming a player in the O/U market. Problems with light or non-strikes of primers, double firing, and poor lock up seemed to be most common. The guns were sent back to Ruger but Ruger did not seem to be as thorough with these guns as their pistols as some problems returned or another problem cropped up.

I feel Ruger blew it with the stocks too, it seemed a little lower in the comb and more pitch than most other shotguns which did not fit the typical shooter. Something closer to the norm might have quelled the complaints regarding recoil but those coupled with mechanical problems and lackluster service doomed this model.

My main concern with this gun today is a lack of support as Ruger no longer works on this model. Who does and what is available for parts is unknown to me. With the problems I've seen I would pass on this gun. The original blued 20 ga model would be a different matter...

i own 3 Red Labels i enjoy all 3 shotguns ,they have great resale value too if you take care of them

I must have been born with birth defects then since my Red Label fits me perfectly and I always had the highest scores of all my shotguns when I shot sporting clays with it for almost 20 years. I also never had a single hiccup with that shotgun and I still have it.

I wanted to like the Red Label, but couldn't shoot it very well. Same could be said of the Browning O/U's. Beretta fits me like a glove and I shoot Beretta 686 series guns better than anything else I have tried by a wide margin. Makes me the odd man out around here as this is Browning country. Browning guns are top of the heap in my neck of the woods. And there are a lot of Ruger handguns, rimfires and centerfire rifles sold locally here so a Red Label is a sought after shotgun. With that said, only one guy at my shotgun club shot a RL for awhile. He got rid of it because it gave him some trouble and Ruger tried to fix it twice and couldn't. Only other Red Label I know of in action is a rabbit hunter that has a 28 gauge. He loves his little RL 28 for busting bunnies in front of his beagles. Wonder why Ruger dropped the Red Label?

Manufacturers pick a stock configuration in hopes it will somewhat fit most purchasers and you happened to find Ruger being the one most closely fitting you. Every manufacturer is a little different so how one can consider that to be a birth defect is beyond me. It seems Ruger guessed wrong for many of their customers as excessive recoil seems to be a common complaint with many of their users. At least with the 12 ga models I've shot.

As for problems with the Red Label, that is fairly well known. Production was halted more than once to correct problems but not always successfully. Not every gun had issues but a large enough portion did that Ruger eventually dropped the model as well as Ruger stopping factory support - something I don't think they have done with any other model. They still do work on the Hawkeyes pistol and Deerslayer carbine which have been out of production for decades. Ruger attempted to compete against Browning and Beretta with an American made O/U but fell woefully short. Ruger's ambitions were worthy but not practical.