DD,
I have always hunted in the shotgun zone in New York, and my entire family uses Ithacas. They truly are a great gun. I own both a 20" smoothbore deerslayer and a 25" fully rifled deerslayer II. I'll try to remain unbiased but it will be hard. My smoothbore can easily do a 2" group at 50 yds with Winchester super-x, and can usually do 3-4 inches at 100. My Deerslayer II at 100 yds with copper solids had all 3 shots touching during site in, and I easily took a deer at 110 yds this year. They are by far the smoothest shucking pump ever made. The advantages are that they are super light weight if you have to walk a long distance and they are bottom eject. This makes them a favorite for left handed people and keeps the rain and other crap out of the action. I also like the shell release in the magazine tube which makes them really easy to unload. As is often said, the quality of the older ones was better than the newer ones. They have gone out of buisiness a couple times recently, and I think the fit, finish, and blueing quality suffered when they had financial troubles. However, I have never seen a problem with these guns as far as accuracy (we own about 15 of them within my family). I must note that they do kick the hell out of you due to their light weight. I would not hesitate to buy one at $275. Sounds like a deal. If the serial number is above 855,000, then you can get bird barrels (though they are getting harder to find). I also have an Ithacafeatherweight 20 gauge bird gun that I would never give up. For more opinions, check out
http://www.shotgunworld.com/bbs/viewforum.php?f=59
Good luck
KEJ