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Ithaca’s M66 Supersingle BY DAN SHIDELER

To borrow a line from the old Lone Ranger radio show, return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear when I used to hunt groundhogs on the old Erie-Lackawanna railroad embankment heading west out of Fort Wayne toward Huntington, Indiana.

My perennial hunting buddy, my brother Dave, and I had honed our groundhog hunting to the level of a science, but one with the delicacy of a fi ne art. We’d walk the tracks, scoping out the grades and washouts and gullies and irrigation ditches for the telltale yellow splashes of sand and clay that told us that a groundhog had set up housekeeping nearby.

Dave would then produce a dog whistle from his pocket and give it a loud, piercing blow. As brilliant clouds of indigo buntings rose from the scrub brush, more often than not a hog would poke his head out of his hole, as if to ask who in the hell is making so much racket? Then we’d let him have it.

Ithaca M66 Super Single in .410 — ugly as sin, but what a shooter!

Even today, I grin when I read of varminters picking off groundhogs with carefully-placed shots at 300 yards. Back in our railroad days, Dave and I harvested bushels of them with such distinctly non-varmint guns as a Colt Model 1927 .45 Auto, an H&R Model 922 .22 revolver and a Marlin 336C in .35 Remington. Thanks to that two-dollar dog whistle, most of our shots were under 35 yards.

I particularly remember one unfortunate dirt-piggy who had the bad judgment to pop out of his hole on the dried clay bank of an irrigation ditch barely 25 yards away from Dave and me. I raised my shotgun to my shoulder and sent a 3” magnum charge of #4 lead shot right at his head. The shot patterned perfectly and sent up a round, absolutely symmetrical puff of clay dust positioned like a halo around the groundhog’s head. Lights out, piggy!

Rebounding hammer and automatic extractor come standard in the M66. Note the barrel wall thickness in this .410.

That was the single most entertaining gunshot I’ve ever taken. Even now, 30 years later, the memory of that dust cloud splashing up around that groundhog’s head – as round and even as a smoke ring blown from my pipe – never fails to make me smile. My hair could be on fire and I could have a hornet up my nose, but the recollection of that perfect groundhog, that perfect pattern, would still make me grin.

I wish I still had the shotgun I was toting that day. It was a 12-ga. Ithaca Model 66 Supersingle. Most serious shotgunners would dismiss the Model 66 as a kid’s gun or worse, but this kid has taken a lot of rabbits, one or two grouse and, yes, even plenty of groundhogs with the old M66.

As I write this I have a .410 Model 66 propped up in a corner of my office. It’s an ugly little spud, with its lever hanging beneath its blocky receiver and oddly Western-style straight stock, but the little gun can shoot. I will bet you a case of Leinenkugel’s Honey Weiss that I can take a Brenneke rifled slug load, pop it into the Model 66, and hit a can of pork and beans with it two times out of three at 35 yards, using only the brass bead front sight. Did I say a case? Hell, let’s go two cases.

As shotguns go, the Ithaca M66 is an example of a type that isn’t exactly fl ourishing anymore: the single-barrel break-open beginner’s gun. Yes, I know that H&R, Baikal and Rossi still make such shotguns, God bless ‘em, but part of me still longs for the day when the local K-Mart stocked Savage 94s and Winchester 37As and Ithaca Model 66s. Those were the days.

The Ithaca M66 is about as simple as you could get: it has a lock, a stock, and a barrel, and that’s about it. With its painted aluminum receiver and matte barrel, it’s a utility gun and not a showpiece. In fact, I can literally strike an Ohio Blue Tip match on the barrel of my .410 M66. Its finish is that raw.

The M66 has no positive safety, just a rebounding hammer. To load it, you fl ip the lever downward and the barrel drops, exposing the chamber. You insert the shell, snap the barrel shut and keep your thumb on the hammer in case something runs out or fl ies up in front of you. If it does, you cock the hammer and squeeze ‘er off. If you can’t make the shot, you very carefully lower the hammer and hope for better luck next time.

The stock on the M66 has what’s called “impressed checkering.” Note: That’s “impressed,” not “impressive.” But it does the job and keeps the gun from squirming out of your hands on rainy days. And the M66 is one gun you don’t mind taking out on a rainy day.

The M66 was offered in .410, 20-gauge, and 12-gauge, all with 3-inch chambers. Most of the M66s I find floating around out there are choked full, but a good number of the 12s and 20s have modifi ed chokes.

Ithaca’s “ugly gun” was manufactured from around 1963 to 1978. Interestingly, there’s a possibility that the venerable Winchester Repeating Arms Company dallied with the idea of producing a Model 66 knockoff.

Wildwood, Inc., a gunshop in China Village, Maine, once posted on the Gun-sAmerica website a prototype shotgun described thus:

“AGAWAM ARMS 12GA SINGLE LEVER ACTION SINGLE SHOT 12GA PROTOTYPE TESTED BY WINCHESTER FOR POSSIBLE PRODUCTION, STAMPED X-2 BY WINCHESTER, LETTER OF AUTHENTICITY FROM ED ULRICH, RETIRED WINCHESTER CUSTOM SHOP.”

The photo accompanying the listing shows a gun that looks suspiciously like an Ithaca M66. Ultimately Winchester opted not to produce the prototype gun, choosing instead to procure a simplifi ed version of their old Model 37 single-shot shotgun from Cooey Arms of Coburg, Ontario, later a division of Winchester. The Cooey gun would later be marketed in the USA as the Winchester Model 37A or the Model 840.

The Ithaca Model 66 came in four basic fl avors: the 12- or 20-gauge or .410 Standard Model, with plain stock and 24” bead-sighted barrel; the Youth Model, which was offered in 20 gauge and .410 only and sported a shortened stock with recoil pad; the Vent Rib Model, which was similar to the Standard Model but had a vent rib on its barrel; and the 20-gauge Model 66 Buck Buster, which featured a 22” smoothbore barrel with rifled sights.

I’ve had two Buck Busters, and each was very accurate with Foster and Bren-neke slugs. I theorize that Ithaca gave Buck Buster barrels the same treatment they gave to their Model 37 Deerslayer barrels, which is to say a very thorough polishing. At any rate, M66 Buck Busters are not to be trifled with, especially if you’re brown and hairy and have antlers growing out of your head.

Values for all of the M66 family run from about $150 to as high as $300 for examples in excellent condition. I know I’d pay that much for a really nice Buck Buster, and I’d kinda like to have a Vent Rib model, too. If Ithaca can supply the kid’s gun, I can still supply the kid!