Hacked Off!
‘Woolner-ized’ Winchester 59 For The Upland Win
Bill Kossowan uses his “Woolner-ized” Winchester 59 on
many upland gamebirds, but he especially favors it on woodcock.
Photo: Bill Kossowan
What’s the perfect woodcock gun? Well, it depends on who you ask. American classics like Parker, Fox, Ithaca and L.C. Smith always make the list. So do the Ruger Red Label, Winchester 101 and 21, and the Ithaca 37. The more woodcock hunters you talk with, the longer the list goes but one thing is true — the perfect woodcock gun is the one with which you can hit.
Brian Davis has two Winchester Model 59s. One is intact and unaltered,
the other he bought from Bill Kossowan, which is modified to Woolner’s
specs. Photo: Brian Davis
Chop Suey
To hit more and cuss less, Frank Woolner took a perfectly good Winchester Model 59 and hacked it up. “Somebody once said nobody ruins a shotgun by cutting two inches off the end of its barrel,” he said. “The homespun philosopher must have been a hunter of woodcock!” And with that, Woolner got to work.
“First, I amputated about one-third of the fat beaver-tailed fore end, jettisoned a long lug bolt, got rid of the useless pistol grip and pared additional ounces off the remaining wood. I cut one barrel back to 23 ½” for early season work with a straight cylinder and kept a standard bird-caged choke tube for other labors.” The modified 59 wound up on the cover of his book Timberdoodle!
Woolner’s creation was far from a Frankenstein monster. It was light enough to carry all day and responsive in the hand. The straight English stock allowed the front and rear hands to work in sync and offer a smooth mount. Ladder in a perfect spread from the .000 barrel constriction and you’ve got the ultimate game gun. If I had a Model 59, I’d Woolner-ize it for sure. Or would I? What about you?
Top Right: Cut the barrel
Middle: Shorten the forend
Bottom Left: Make the pistol grip straight
A League Of Its Own
Brian Davis is a Western Pennsylvania bird hunter and a competitive clays shooter. He likes the Model 59. “I was introduced to the 59 while shooting skeet with a bunch of bird hunters,” he said. “They all shot Model 59s because the steel and fiberglass used in both the barrel and the receiver dropped the overall 12-gauge weight to 6.5 lbs. It was responsive in the woods and easy to carry all day. But my Woolner-ized model is in a different league. Ruffed grouse are wily gamebirds and notoriously tough to hit, but on my first hunt with the Woolner 59, I limited out with 2-for-2 shooting. I hunted with it the next day with the same results. At first I figured the shotgun was magical for I’ve never had a day like that. But what makes it so lethal is that it’s much lighter and more responsive than my original. The wide-open choke makes it deadly on birds flushing at a close range.”
“Were you nervous before you started cutting it down?” I asked.
“Oh, I didn’t modify it,” he said. “I bought it that way. Bill Kossowan from Danvers, Mass. did the work. I bought it from him.”
Bill Kossowan is an avid bird hunter who lives directly across the Bay from me. He didn’t just modify one Model 59; he made 11. He was inspired by a segment appearing on Woolner Brothers Outdoors, a local weekly television show.
“Their show was about fishing and upland bird hunting, two of my favorite activities. In one episode Frank detailed how he cut down his 59, and I thought ‘someday I’ll make one just like him.’ After I made my first one, I realized the magic is it shifts the balance point back to about the trigger guard. That is what makes it exceptionally fast handling. We bird hunters use one hand to push aside the thickets, and a light, well balanced gun is far easier to carry and the third shot is an advantage, too. I’ve made nearly a dozen over the years so you might say I got a little carried away.”
Frank Woolner’s Timberdoodle! shows the famous
shotgun at work. It’s unsurprising hunters like Bill Kossowan
still step up to the plate and knock a dozen out of the park!
Cult Favorite
Introduced in 1959, the semi-automatic never quite met with commercial success. Just over 82,000 shotguns were produced before it was discontinued in 1965. Kossowan believes he has found so many available in New England because the majority of those sales were in the region. “I’ve noticed one main similarity with used models,” Kossowan said. “The shotgun was a pain to clean, and there were so many moving parts. Grandpa typically bought one, shot it for a while, struggled with the cleaning and put it in the back of the cabinet. Each Model 59 I bought had to be thoroughly cleaned before modification.”
Kossowan’s close friend and hunting buddy Alan Johnson helped with the first modification. “Cutting the barrel is easy, but altering the wood takes some courage,” he laughed. “Alan is an unbelievably talented machinist who spent his career working for General Electric, and everything he works on comes out perfectly. The modification has only three steps. First, I had to chop back the barrel. Second, I trimmed back the forend. Third, I had to cut down and smooth out the pistol grip. I spent most of my time working with a belt sander and then staining and re-checkering the stock. That’s the shotgun that Brian now owns.”
Winchester Model 59s never were cabinet queens and Kossowan has used his throughout New England on woodcock, Ruffed grouse and Northern Bobwhite quail. Davis uses his too, mostly on Pennsylvania Ruffed grouse and woodcock. And just last week, Thompson pulled his 59 from the rack to use on some released quail he uses for training. “I’m in the process of breaking a few really nice gun dogs, and the 59 put some feathers in their mouths,” he said.
