Fox Collectors

My lightest is a 20ga AE 26" at 5lbs 10oz. How about you? My CE 26" weights 5lbs 14oz.

5lbs 13oz Straight grip 20 gauge A-grade with 26” barrels.

My lightest is my 20 gauge XE 26" 5 lb 8 oz factory weight, letter states: "bore out about 3 oz, strike 2 oz. from barrels". It has been restocked, so all that is out the window.

300033 26” 16g extractor. 5-8. Early A with snap forend.

26 inch 20 ga sterlingworth extractor 5 lbs 4 ounces and it has been restocked. Bobby

A grade 20ga, 26" barrels, 5lbs. 10-1/4oz.

16g CE with Red Head pad, 1924 mfg. 5.15.8 with 28 inch 4# bbls.

To each his own. Just adding my perspective here since I don’t buy into all the hype for ultra lightweight shotguns. If faced with the choice of a 5-3/4 or a 6-1/4 Fox smallbore for the uplands - all else being equal - I'd take the heavier one any day of the week. Surely the lightest ones add zest and sound cool when posting/writing about them, and they swing nicely in the gun room or den, but to me they're like buggy whips out in the field. Too easy to swing past a bird. They also can be counterproductive when trying to practice because of cumulative recoil while shooting with traditional hunting loads and the POI is often different if you practice using low velocity shells. But then again if you're a “natural shot” you don’t need much if any pre-season practice.

Again, all this is just my perspective fwiw. frank

My lightest:

Sterlingworth 20 with 26" barrels and ejectors (you know the gun Craig) = 5 pounds and 15 ounces

My CE20 with 26" barrels, Sterlingworth type fore end = 5 pounds 14 ounces. Just like your CE20 w/26" Craig.

Jolly

Queenie, my 16 ga. A grade with 26” barrels weighs 5 lbs 13 oz. Iva, my 20 ga. Sterlingworth with 26” barrels weighs 5 lbs. 12 oz. Not necessarily a great clays gun, but she sure is a pleasure to carry while pheasant hunting.

A 1927 vintage A-Grade, 20-gauge, 28-inch, 5 pounds 13.6 ounces. The two 20-gauge A-Grades I've shot most are 6 pounds and 6 pounds 3 ounces.

For an upland hunting small bore Fox, I am in Frank's camp. Too light and the gun is whippy.
Jim

Then there was the mid-Grade Fox 12 gauge 28" upland gun that had been ordered "light" back in the ‘teens and shipped to a place in what was then grouse country. Buttplate gun, no recoil pad. Gents were going goo goo over her while being advertised and with comments like: a magic wand indeed! I bought the gun and my digital scale showed 6-8. I hunted with her a couple of years but was always afraid of denting or even bending the barrels if I tripped and thus was super careful in the thickets. Not good whilst trying to pay attention for grouse. I sold her and just a year or so later she was FS on a on-line site with a note that one of her tubes had an "old repair". Yeah right. Pic showed ripples in that area where the thin barrel wall had been pushed out to fix as best could be done. I doubt that tube could have been struck off/reblued without compromising its already thin wall. What a sad ending for what was once someone’s pride and joy. frank

Whippy guns (for you) and paper thin barrels should be rejected. One man's whippy gun may not feel that way to another shooter, Is it because mankind is physically larger in the modern era and vintage light guns feel like feathers? Has modern sporting clays with 8 pound guns affected our shooting mechanics?? Our forefathers were primarily bird hunters and not clays shooters and they purchased mostly light weight 20's and 16's WHY ??

My 20gauge sterlingworth with 28 inch tubes is 5 lbs 15.5 oz.