popplecop:
This 77 year old read your posts with delight that we "older" people have a champion!
( I enjoyed your description of yourself as a retired "game warden". That was the title I knew in upstate NY in my youth (before the publicity people thought it sounded better to say "Conservation officer") (The first game warden I knew walked with a bad limp -the product of a deer jacker shooting him in the knee. The jacker was caught up with by our local State Troopers who shot him after he "resisted arrest". (In those days it was a very bad idea to shoot at a law officer) Anyway, I too carried the Rem 31 in my youth. I can't claim to have compared it to a Win. Mod. 12 because I never owned a Mod.12 -but very definitely I remember its smoothness. (I have owned any number of Rem Wingmasters and they all were good -but no better than that Rem. 31. ( I do have to say that I owned for 3-4 grouse seasons, a Win. Mod. 97 - straight grip, hammer -used, of course - and I killed more grouse with that shotgun than I ever did with any other. I wanted a more "modern" shotgun. My father's advice about keeping a gun that kills was ignored. I got my "modern" shotgun. An Ithaca Mod.37 -and the light weight and bottom ejection threw me off completely in shooting at ruffed grouse. Then I got to a Rem Mod.31. I stuck with Rem. shotguns ever after. (BTW, never drove a De Soto. Can't remember what the hood emblem looked like so I can't remember the car. I do miss hood emblems. Now I know that I probably rank as an "antique"!)