My brother got one of these for my mother a couple of years ago. Ma will be 89 next month & she uses it to shoot the "bad birds" who come to her bird feeder.

 

I can believe that rifle will do a number on birds. My '99 Model 25MN was so accurate my wife decided to claim it as hers!

 

I have one that I bought new for my dad. He used it to keep starlings from raiding his purple Marlin birdhouses. I used it to rid my rental house from gray squirrels that got in to the attic. I sat in a lawn chair in the garage and picked them off as they tried to make their way outside. It's a smooth bore, so it doesn't spin the shot string out.

 

I've seen them, but it's been a while.

DR

 

I have an old Winchester model 1890 slide action (pump) that was converted at least seventy years ago to a smoothbore with a front bead sight like most shotguns. It belonged to my grandparents. They kept it to shoot unwanted birds around their home which was within the city limits of the small Texas town where they lived. They called it "The Shotshell". When I would stay with them, which was often, they would hand me a box 22 shot (the all brass rounds with the crimped brass nose.)

Where it really shined was frog hunting. My grandfather would take me bullfrog hunting. (damn I miss him!!) Instead of a gig, we would use the old Shotshell. If we shot frogs with a solid 22 bullet, they would jump in the water and we would lose them. With the shotshell, we would sneak up behind them and shoot them at the base of the head from about 5 ft. +/-). The shot would flatten them. We would pick them up and put them in the "Croaker Sack" and spotlight for another one. After about 5 - 10 minutes, the frogs would come back to life having been stunned by the shot. On a good night we would bring home about 30 frogs.

Those frogs were big and good eating. We would gut and then skin the entire frog except for the head which we severed and tossed in the "gut pail". There was lot of meat on the front legs and back of those big frogs. Keeping just the legs would have been wasteful.

To this day, I love hunting at night. I guess it's the mystery of things in the dark that you seldom see in daylight and the excitement of panning a strong light toward a sound in the night. Tomorrow night I may sit over a feeder and pop a hog or two with one of my suppressed rifles. We've got a lot of hogs, some of which appear to have some European genetics as some of the babies are reddish brown with white, longitudinal stripes.

 

Didn't know they were made in magnums. I've got an old Remington 121 pump with the 'Routledge' smooth bore with a factory bead front sight that is a sweet little number on short range small critters. AC

Nice video I found:

 

Mossberg made a smoothbore .22 called Targo (for shooting mini skeet) back in the day. A pawnshop here had a nice one for months for $95, I thought about it but never bought it. No use for it that I could think of.

 

USE is a terrible word!

DR

 

never knew they existed, learn somthin new every day
still waitin on the henry 410:bike:

 

Ewr

 

We had them at scout camp when I was a kid.

 

I believe the G in 25MG stands for Garden Gun.

 

First one I've seen in .22 Mag. I knew Marlin made limited runs of rimfire smoothbores for garden guns, the ones I've seen have been for regular .22 shotshells. Been awhile since I've seen the CCI .22 Mag shotshells, I think CCI is the sole source, pre-Obama panic for sure. And the price per box way out-weighed a similar quantity of 12 gauge promo loads. The higher powered air rifles pretty much have that niche right now for close range pest shooting.

My granddad had a similar mean on for "blackbirds", always had a Daisy 25 behind the kitchen door. Inherited 5 with sprung springs, he always left them cocked. Don't know why he had a hate for grackles, but he did.

Stan S.

 

Neat...I have never heard of a .22 shotgun either. It sounds kinda odd using the terms .22 and shotgun together. Owning one of those would be cool.

 

I have had a few of the Rutledge bore 22s, never shot them much. When I did it was with the crimped shot loads.
Does the CCI shot loads open up out of a smooth bore? I had a unfortunate incident with CCIs in a old Stevens that
was kept loaded with them for garden defense. I shot a critter that I just wanted to sting at about 40'. Capsule failed
to open and killed him dead as a clam.

 

Cool I didn't know about the .22 mag either. I played with a lot of LR shot when I was a kid.

I did have a bolt action .9MM Winchester at one time. It was a garden gun.

It may still be on Leroy Mertz sight I haven't checked in some time.

He was asking a lot for it, but no nibbles. It was an odd ball!

Sold in the 1902 Sears Roebuck catalog for $2 and change.

 

Here is a Marlin firearm that I have never heard of---a 2001 JM Marlin 25 MG 22 Mag Smoothbore Shotgun (shoots only 22 Mag shot shells--as claimed by the online listing). Its listed on GB for a hefty buy it now price of 950 bucks. The GB auction number is #631184357. Never knew this model even existed.
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I have one I got off my friend a while a back. Pretty cool gun

 

Almost bought one about 5 years ago. It was cheap compared to that price.

It's based on the 25 frame, M for Magnum, G for Garden Gun. Just like N is for Deluxe (25N or 25MN).

 

I never heard of the 25mg shotgun till I saw one in a LGS last week. I went home and had to look it up. They wanted 550.00 for it

 

I went to an estate sale last summer that had 2 or 3 of the MG's on the sale NIB. Part of the reason I attended was that I had never seen this model before

I want to say they sold for 400-450.

 

Another unloved Marlin - I'm drawn to orphans. Seems that prices for the 25MG have been wildly variable... I've seen them in the low $300's, and if that one actually sold for asking at $950 in '17 it's the highest I've seen, though others were nearly that spendy. Last one sold on GB was in the middle of that range with 17 bids. They're kinda rare, and the value's unpredictable - depends on just how much the "wants" surge when they change hands. Savage marketed a smoothbore garden gun in 22LR a couple of years ago, but I've no clue how well they were received.