FWIW my older brother now has taken over 80 deer with slugged shotguns. His favorite barrel to use on his Ithaca 37 is an 20” smoothbore barrel with cantilevered scope mount, so the scope stays affixed to the barrel. I’ve seen him take shots to 125Yds with that setup. They made those barrels before they started making them rifled, with cantilever mount.
His favorite slug is the old Foster-style, 2-3/4” 1-ounce loads, where the Rem
Sluggers work best for him.
He also has a rifled cantilever mount mount barrel, but in his experience the Foster slugs have better knock-down power on our Eastern whitetails. He had one big buck run off a looooong distance after getting hit by on of those $5 sabot slugs, and friends have lost deer using rifled ‘sabot’ slugs where they just
zipped right through and didn’t expand or create damage.
Anyways … back to the topic of this thread:
For any upland game hunter who loves both Ithaca 37s and the 20-Ga shotgun, I saw this 1946 20-Ga at a store the other day for $350. It has very nice wood, hand cut checkering, and a 28” plain barrel with a ‘Dial-A-Duck’ poly-choke on the end. PM me if you want the Dealer’s name in Eastern Mass.