The M31 was first made available in 12- and 16-gauge, then later in 20-gauge, and weighed under 7 pounds, making it a damn fine field gun. It was developed off the Remington M17 platform with one serious upgrade-a side gate loading port (the M17 was bottom fed). The Remington 31 was Big Green’s first real attempt at building a gun to compete with the M12. īefore the advent of the iconic Remington 870, Winchester’s Model 12 was the gold standard in pump shotguns. Remington Model 31 The Remington 31 was available in a sporting model and trench gun. The 12-gauge will shoot 2¾-inch shells, and if you can find a 19, it won’t cost more than a few hundred dollars. One of the things you need to be careful about with this gun (and all old hammer guns) is to make sure the hammer does not strike the firing pin (or the pin doesn’t move forward on its own) before the slide is fully engaged in the chamber.
Apparently hunters didn’t like the high-gloss tube on the 98, so that was updated on the 19.
The 19 was an upgrade on the Marlin 1898 and came with a matte barrel finish. It’s a bit of a complicated process if you haven’t done it before (tech wasn’t as advanced a century ago), but basically you just pull the fore-end backward, flip a switch, push the fore-end forward, and the threaded barrel unscrews from the chamber. It’s also a takedown, so you can remove the barrel from the action. What’s cool about the 19 is it’s a hammer gun, so that means as you slide the fore-end back, it cocks the hammer, and after you pull the trigger, the hammer strikes the firing pin, sending the shot downrange. This pump-action shotgun is over 100 years old and was only in production from 1906 to 1907. Marlin 19 More than a century old, the 19 was only in production for a year.