Selecting which "type" of waterfowl shotgun you're going to shoot is an important decision. That's because each of the four types listed above have a lot of individual idiosyncrasies. Sure, some folks can pick up any one of them and score pretty well, but I'd venture a guess that there are a lot more wildfowlers who won't shoot one, two or even three of the shotgun types all that well. Why is that? Let's explore at least some of the reasons, since looking a little deeper into the pluses and minuses of these shotgun types might help us understand why one of them might be better suited for you.

Semiauto Shotguns
Although pump guns might have been the most popular of shotguns among waterfowlers 30, 40 and 50 years ago, semiautos dominate today. Perhaps the most popular reasons for this are the reduction of recoil available in the gas-operated guns, and the high tech engineering that has gone into these guns over the last several years.

Few, if any, traditional recoil-operated shotguns are made these days, especially for waterfowl shooting. These smoothbores, in which the barrel moves back appreciably upon recoil to eject the empty and feed the new shell into the chamber, were once very popular--with the model A-5 from Browning leading the pack in this category. These days only Franchi makes a recoil-operated shotgun--its 48Al, and it's a light gun aimed at upland hunters. A number of recoil-operated shotguns from other manufacturers have fallen by the wayside over the years.

Gas-operated shotguns are great because they significantly reduce recoil. The Benelli Inertia Driven shotguns do not operate on the gas principle, or the traditional recoil-operated principle. Their system is totally different, and these guns don't suck up recoil like the gas guns. However, Benelli addressed the problem by going to a sophisticated new stock. Called ComforTech, this stock has 11 chevrons that hold the top of the buttstock to the bottom of the buttstock, and each of these 11 chevrons is a recoil reducer.

Shooting a semiauto is pretty easy. Once you pull the trigger, the gun reloads itself for the next cartridge. Of course, many look at pumps and semiautos, with their three-shot capability, as being head and shoulders over a two-shot over-under or side-by-side. One certain negative with semiautos is that empties go flying to the right, which might disturb your duck blind partner. Pump guns can cause the same problem, with one exception--the bottom-ejecting Ithaca 37. Remington's new semiauto, the 105 CTi, with bottom ejection, eliminates this problem, too.

Pump Guns
The Ithaca 37 was used by a few waterfowlers over the years, but this was a fairly light, fixed-breech pump, so it had to be a hard kicker. Many of the model 37 12 gauges had 23?4-inch chambers, so shooting 11?4-ounce lead loads at a bit less than 1,200 feet per second (fps) was probably a lot more tolerable--compared to today's steel loads of 11?8 at 1,500-fps. Modern nontoxic waterfowl loads come out of the muzzle so much faster than the lead loads of yesteryear, and is perhaps the main reason so many duck and goose buffs have switched to lower recoiling gas-operated guns.