The Ruger Woodside, an elegant shotgun for a simpler time
Bill Ruger decided to bring back an over-and-under double-barreled shotgun to the U.S. in the 1970s and his design, the Red Label was popular leading to an even spiffier Gold Label SXS spinoff. As a brief split from this family tree of Ruger trap guns came the beautiful and briefly lived Woodside.
When Browning introduced their Superposed shotgun in 1928, the American public started to fall in love with the concept of a well-made, good shooting, and utterly reliable stacked barrel shotgun. Unlike side-by-side double barrel shotguns that had issues with aim points (neither barrel fired at the same target the same way) and recoil, a shotgun with two barrels stacked one on top and the other underneath just made brilliant sense. This led to the first popular commercial Over/Under (O/U) shotgun.
Fast forward to the 1970s and the Belgian-made Browning Superposed cost as much as a good used car and there were no US-made O/U shotguns that didn’t cost even more. This is when Bill Ruger introduced their Red Label double barrel shotgun, to this date the only shotgun made by Sturm, Ruger. It proved a hit with the public for its affordability, reliability, and handling. It remained a staple of the company’s catalog for three decades. In 1995, the while most makers were going full polymer, Ruger beefed up the walnut.
Enter the Woodside…
