Shotguns

Particularly among the hunting crowd, who like to pit their wingshooting skills against those gray ghosts of fall — darting and diving aerobatic mourning doves and their white-winged cousins — more and more 28s are replacing their larger 20- and 12-gauge cousins. There is still a time and a place for big guns, but a growing number of hunters and clay target shooters are finding out that a smaller gauge can mean more shooting with less punishment.

One veteran outdoor observer, Foard Houston of the Sandy Oaks Ranch Hunting Lodge and Resort near Devine, Texas, is an unwavering 28-gauge convert. After putting hundreds of hunters each year on thousands of dove and quail, he has yet to find a shotgunner returning to a 12-gauge thunder boomer after trying out a 28.

With less weight and less recoil to their credit, the 28-gauge shotguns can get the job done while being a pleasure to handle. Putting the question in highway lingo: "Why drive a massive tractor-trailer rig when you can get from here to there behind the wheel of a sleek sports car?"

Seasoned outdoor enthusiasts point out that the 28s are also a good idea for both youngsters and women, who can be recoil sensitive, and provide nearly identical knock-down power as a 12 on most birds and targets. The tiny scatterguns might even keep shooters from becoming sky blasters, throwing shot at targets well out of range.

Many all-around hunters like to keep a "user" shotgun in their collection to handle situations where rough and tumble conditions may not be favorable for a fine fowling piece. As a veteran shotgunner once said of his well-worn scattergun: "She might not be the prettiest gal at the ball, but she'll keep you dancing."

An inexpensive, all-purpose shotgun can be a useful tool. Whether you hang it on a gun rack in the back window of your pick-up truck (unloaded please) or store it at the hunting lodge to help the cook keep meat in the stew pot, you don't want anything too fancy.

Falling into that "user" category are two semi-automatics — an ADCO Diamond GE manufactured in Turkey and a MK Conquest Model 901 from Germany — we recently put through a shooting test both in the field and on some Five-Stand clay targets. Both shotguns carry a MFRP of under $500 and each featured 3-inch chambers that provide versatility in a variety of wingshooting conditions.

The concept behind extending the firearms' chambers beyond the normal 2.75 inches for standard length shotgun shells was developed to increase the tools of today's modern shotgunner. Waterfowl and turkeys are just two of the bird species that can send a hunter looking for 3-inch loads. The bigger birds often require more knockdown delivered by the longer shells, which allow for extra powder and shot.

In the gun world we rarely find a gun that doesn't offer some sort of match up. Usually, such a firearm has some unique character, such as being chambered for an oddball cartridge, or its pricing sets it apart by either being way below market or way above market. Even so, we can usually find something that works well enough to form a comparison test.

Not so with Winchester's 9410 lever-action shotgun. The 9410 adapts the Model 94 rifle lever action into a shotgun that can handle 2.5-inch .410 ammunition reliably. As such, it makes a good squirrel, cottontail, grouse, or dove-hunting gun (properly plugged for migratory birds, of course). To our knowledge, there's not another shotgun out there like it.

With that in mind, we decided to put this product through its paces, keeping in mind its high MSRP and limited cartridge usefulness. As we tested, the question we asked was, "Would we buy this gun instead of many other proven .410s with slide or autoloading actions?"

Here's what we found:

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Not every hunter needs to shoot 3- or 3.5-inch magnum shells. In fact, a 2.75-inch chamber is usually enough for hunting. Should you buy a more expensive 1100 or a cheaper Spanish gun?

The best place to field-test any shotgun is on live birds, but because so much of our testing is done out of season, we only infrequently get to pop a cap at the real thing. However, we recently got to test two inexpensive over/unders on high-flying whitewing and mourning doves in Uvalde, Texas, and we came away with what we believe are some valuable real-world insights into the performance of these two guns.

Wingshooters are often torn in making a choice when they go shopping for a "field gun." Our definition of such a creature is a working shotgun, one which will suffer the ignominies of hard use banging around in a canoe, leaning up against barbed wire, or getting dropped in the dirt. The tension in the decision comes from the desire to buy a gun that works and which shoots well—those two qualities are musts—but also the desire to get the most for your money.

Dove hunting offers prime September shooting action in many states, and the quest for the best gun for that sport continues unabated. Because most dove hunters have batting (shooting) averages on par with a AAA shortstop coming to the bigs—if he hits his weight, he's lucky—there's always interest in finding a better gun to hit the tricky-flying birds.

Many's been the time when members of our staff have been afield deer hunting and walked into a mess of quail, and wished for a shotgun to knock down a bird or two. Or, conversely, when we've been fall turkey hunting with a shotgun and saw a huge buck rise up 75 yards away, making us pine for a rifle. Though such situations occur when we're least prepared, which is to say most of the time, there is a way to have our cake and eat it, too.

In the wide world of shotgunning, you got your tube-fed pumps and semiautos, your one- and two-shot break-action single shots, over/unders, and side by sides, and the occasional bolt action. But few shotgunners have beheld a magazine-fed pump or semiauto, which on the surface at least, offer simple operation and a lot of capacity.

We recently tested two box-fed shotguns from overseas that are sold in America. The first was the Saiga Semi-Auto 12-gauge, $380, which we obtained from CDNN, P.O. Box 6514, Abilene, Texas 79608; (800) 588-9500; fax (915) 695-4898. European American Armory of Cocoa, Florida, imports the Saiga from Russia. Documents packed with the Saiga describe it as appropriate for "amateur hunting of small and medium winged game," but to our eyes, it was configured much more like a self-defense shotgun. This was due in part to the gun's black metal and plastic finish, rifle-type open sights, and five-round magazine (5+1) capacity. Ditto that for the Italian Valtro Model PM5 (Versione Calcio Plastica, MSRP $350), a slide-action seven-shooter (7+1) that came with an attached pistol-grip stock, sights, a thread protector/Cylinder choke, and a wrench.

Two Armscor models function as well as we could ask, and similar guns from Norinco and Winchester are worth a look.

Finding an affordable over/under is getting easier to do, depending on what you mean by affordable. For many, the cutoff is at $1,000; for others, it's $1,500, and so on. For some, price is no object.

But everyone wants a gun they can shoot, and such a gun is worth its weight in gold, irrespective of what it costs. We recently had a chance to try two shotguns from U.S. Repeating Arms Co. and Franchi that held out hope of being good shooters that wouldn't break the bank. The guns were USRAC/Winchester's Supreme Field, which carries an MSRP of $1,383, and the $1,275 Franchi Alcione Field. Here's what we found:

The side-by-side has largely fallen from favor—witness the paucity of them in most companies' lines. But we test two inexpensive models to see what they offer the budget-minded shooter.