Cimarron brought a few to Winter Range and no heatshield on those either, so I asked Joe (A.D. Texaz) and he said none of them have the heatshield, so the original email was mistaken. I had heard some talk at Shotshow about heatshields, so I guess someone got confused.
Last Saturday at a match a guy had one of the new ones. He said it was a little stiff at first but after running a box of shells through it, it felt pretty good.
Oh yeah, Jake C was asking for any details on these. I can tell you some of the unique features. It has a rather thick black rubber buttpad. It is comfortable (to me) but kind of dorky looking. The bore is chrome lined, and it has one choke tube in it ( IC I think) which is TruChoke type. And the screws are supposed to be like originals, not metric. My older one held 6 AA's in the tube, which was good for Wild Bunch.
I have one of the older ones, which I hand-picked from a scratch'n'dent group (minor blemish in the blueing). I haven't used it much, one CAS match and a few wild bunch, and it has been fine. I guess the jury is still out on how the new ones hold up. I haven't heard anything bad yet but they haven't been out very long.