I guess I never have been too crazy about the new shotguns I'm seeing these days. Never have been a fan for rails, lazers, optics and what not on a shotgun. I have always thought of them best in their classic form so here are 2 of my latest additions.
When I first came into the USAF, this was our standard shotgun we carried. This started out life as a regular 870 pre-police model that was a police trade in gun. The original barrel was the standard 18" variety but when I lucked out and swapped some gun repair work for a bayonet lug magazine bracket and 3-round extension, I figured I may as well make a clone of the old 870s. I had an extra 20" full choke barrel around so a little work with a pipe cutter and a file to smooth the edges, I now had the 20" barrel but it was blued. I sent it off to Adco and had them parkerize it and while it turned out a little darker than the lighter finish of the gun, it was still better than the blued barrel I had on it. Besides, it's not the first military shotgun I seen with some parts darker than other.
Next is my latest addition. When I picked up my 870 from the dealer, I seen he had both a Sterling AR-180 that I later swapped an M-4gery for as well as this old Defender. Again, this was another old police gun that was carried by a local cop here when he put it up for sale. He wanted $225 for it so I made an even swap for a Norinco 97 riot gun I had around that I wasn't using. The buttpad was gone and only had a plastic spacer on it with a couple screw heads poking out (still, I had to test fire it screw-heads or no screw-heads) and when I seen it wasn't going to have any problems I ordered a replacement plastic butt plate from Brownells and fitted it to the stock. I also tend to prefer slings on my long guns (I figure it's sort of like a holster for a pistol) and ordered an Uncle Mikes swivel set. I still had a Vikings Tactical sling around so I installed that as well. Now the 870 I won off gunbroker was as clean as this one was FILTHY!!! I think I went through 3/4 bottle of Hoppes and about 3-4 hours detail stripping the thing to clean the crud out of it!
The thing I wonder about is did Winchester ever make the Defender in the 1200 series? The thing that makes me wonder is that the 1300 series I've seen doesn't have a screw on the bottom of the slide that needs to be removed before you can take the bolt out whereas this one does. Other than that, this might turn out to be a pretty decent gun. The Winchester 1200 trench guns we had when I was in the Marines were pretty much widely despised when compared to our Mossberg 590s but I figured I'd give the Winchester design another chance.