fattire75

I use IC for every things except pass shooting geese I will use Mod, but I feel good using fast steel 1 shot out to 45 yards with IC when hunting over decoys. If I know all the shooting is going to be 40 to 50 yards pass shooting I will shoot mod BB. For duck over decoys I like IC with fast steel 3 shot out to 45 yards. good luck

[ September 02, 2003, 11:14 AM: Message edited by: fattire75 ]

I think it has to be gas, I am not sure when Benelli came out with the current rotating bolt recoil operated system but I think in 1980 the only recoil shotguns were built on the A-5 long recoil patent. A 23 year old gas gun that is giving you problems, it might be time to trade it in. It is probably worth $100-$200, I don’t know. If you want a new auto the Franchi 612 is a nice gun for the money. I personally would not buy an auto used, but if your budget is tight you can pick up a used 870 wingmaster pump or Ithaca pump for $200-$300. Good luck, email benelli and ask them if it is gas or recoil .

Stacy if you don't mind shooting a pump go with the Ithaca pump 16 gauge, you can get it in the featherlight at 6 1/4 pounds steel receiver or the Ultra Featherlight Aluminum receiver at 5 1/2 pounds. Excellent gun. Go to www.ithacagun.com Ask them to send you a catalog not all the guns are listed on the website, don't ask me why. They are not cheap but if you shop around you can find one for the same price as an 870 wingmaster. The Ithaca action is so smooth unlike any other pump you have ever seen. I shoot a 16-gauge Ithaca and a 12 ga 870 wingmaster both quality guns the Ithaca has a smoother action by far. The biggest problem with the 870 16 ga is that it is built on a 12 ga frame so it is as heavy as a 12 ga. Good luck

If it is a gas gun, you have to keep the gas ports very clean, I had an old 1100 that would jam when it got cold. The powder does not burn as clean or efficiently when it is cold out and clogs the gas ports. IF you ever hunt out of a goose pit when it is cold and there is snow on the ground you can see all the unburned powder on the snow. Find the cleanest burning shells you can find, and clean the gas ports after every shoot. Steel powder not as clean as lead powder. I have heard that if you keep the shells warm in a pocket and rotate shells from your gun to your pocket and back it can help keep the shells warm and the powder burns better. I sold the 1100 and bought a used 870 Wingmaster. I don't know what shells to recommend unfortunately. Good luck.

They use to have a section that gave information on chokes, bore diameters, how many pellets for each different load with different size shot. Things like that. Thanks

I sure miss the shotgun facts section on the old Benelli website. I wish they would bring it back, had a lot of useful info. I sent them an email if you miss shotgun facts please email them as well.

I would love a gas 16 auto a Beretta 391 or franchi 616. I would love it at 6 pounds with a 28-inch barrel. The lightweight recoil autos like the 20 ga benellis or franchi al 48 or browning A-5 kick with the faster or heavier loads.

I hope someone is listening. a 16 ga just patterns 1 to 1 1/4 loads better than a 20 ga. a 6 pound 16 ga with a 28 inch barel would be heaven. [ August 18, 2003, 04:49 PM: Message edited by: fattire75 ]

Hunting pheasants on a game farm will be nice for you and your dad. but it has nothing in common with hunting wild birds over good dogs. Have fun.

I found this article interesting; I shoot a 12-ga 30-barrel pump for Waterfowl and a 28 inch 16 ga pump or 24 inch 20 ga pump for upland. Longer is Better by Philip Bourjaily Field and Stream It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. Used to be, back in the days B.C.T. (Before Choke Tubes), your choice of barrel length was made for you. Open-choke guns had 26-inch barrels; Modifieds were 28-inch, and Full-choke barrels measured 30 inches. With interchangeable choke tubes, you could pick any barrel length–choke combination you wanted. It became entirely possible to shoot ducks with a 21-inch Full-choke barrel or woodcock with a 30-inch Skeet barrel. Freedom to choose guarantees some folks will make bad decisions, and the trend among some hunters toward short-barreled shotguns saves the lives of countless gamebirds every year. The Case for Longer Barrels Short barrels make a gun light in the muzzle and therefore fast to the target. Too many of us remain enthralled by the notion of speed out of the blocks; we don’t stop to consider that a gun that starts quickly stops just as quickly. If you don’t make a conscious effort to keep a short-barreled gun moving, it will lose momentum and stop. You’ll poke at the bird instead of swinging through it. We want to “paint birds out of the sky” with a smooth stroke, not spatter lead at them like Jackson Pollock. The added weight of a long barrel smooths your swing and helps keep the gun moving for a positive follow-through. How important is follow-through? As one instructor told me as I shot behind a succession of clays: “On a scale of 1 to 10 in importance, forward allowance is a 10. Follow-through is a 10,000.” For field shooting, I like 28-inch barrels on over/unders and side-by-sides (they look better with longer barrels, too), especially in smaller gauges. Pumps and autos, with their longer receivers, can get by with 26-inch barrels, although my preference is for repeaters with 28-inch barrels, or even 30 inches for waterfowl. Shoot a few longer-barreled guns, and you’ll be surprised to find they can get on target quickly enough, yet still add some discipline to your swing. Look at the fastest clay-target game of all, International skeet. An International skeet shooter must hold the butt of the gun in contact with the hipbone until he sees the target, then mount and shoot at a clay traveling 65 miles per hour. The variable delay built into the traps means the bird may rocket from the house the instant the shooter calls “pull,” or up to three seconds later. If ever a game cried out for a quick-draw shotgun, it’s this one, and the winners shoot o/u’s with 28- or even 30-inch barrels. Does Light Make Right? Often, people buy short-barreled guns because they’re lighter than longer-barreled models. Certainly the simplest way for a gunmaker to trim weight is to chop a few inches off the barrel. If you’re shopping for a lightweight, however, you have plenty of other options besides short guns: Beretta’s Whitewing, for instance, is my new favorite “entry-level” o/u. It weighs under 6 pounds in 20-gauge and about 63/4 pounds in 12-gauge, even with 28-inch barrels. A couple of seasons ago, I shot an Ithaca Ultra Featherlight pump for a while that I had special-ordered with a 28-inch barrel. Weighing under 6 pounds, it carried effortlessly in the field and was quick to point but very easy to shoot well. Browning’s Citori Feather is extremely light, but it realizes its weight savings through an alloy receiver, not a short barrel, so it weighs next to nothing yet swings very nicely indeed. Imaginary Advantages People choose barrels for reasons that actually make very little practical difference. Longer barrels have their advantages, but they do not “shoot harder” than shorter ones. Well, not much harder, anyway. There is a slight increase in velocity with longer barrels, on the order of 5 or 6 fps per inch of barrel with most loads. You’ll read too, that longer barrels offer a lengthened sighting plane. Maybe for some folks they do, but when I’m looking over the rib at a target I can’t tell if the gun’s barrel is 20 inches long or 40. Although I’ve confined this discussion primarily to the uplands, it hasn’t escaped my notice that some duck hunters shoot 21- to 24-inch barrels, too. Don’t get me started. Suffice it to say, if you insist on shooting such a gun at waterfowl, bring earplugs for everyone in the blind. Short barrels theoretically handle better in the brush, but I’ve found it’s rarely those last few inches of muzzle that tangle up in the greenery. Bushes, branches, and vines are more likely to grab you in a bear hug than they are to catch your gun’s muzzle. However, sling a long-barreled gun over your shoulder as you so often do in the turkey woods, and it will stick up over your head like an antenna, snagging all manner of overhanging shrubbery. So cut-down barrels have their place, after all—on turkey guns. And that is the long and short of it.

I found this article interesting; I shoot a 12-ga 30-barrel pump for Waterfowl and a 28 inch 16 ga pump or 24 inch 20 ga pump for upland. Longer is Better by Philip Bourjaily Field and Stream It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. Used to be, back in the days B.C.T. (Before Choke Tubes), your choice of barrel length was made for you. Open-choke guns had 26-inch barrels; Modifieds were 28-inch, and Full-choke barrels measured 30 inches. With interchangeable choke tubes, you could pick any barrel length–choke combination you wanted. It became entirely possible to shoot ducks with a 21-inch Full-choke barrel or woodcock with a 30-inch Skeet barrel. Freedom to choose guarantees some folks will make bad decisions, and the trend among some hunters toward short-barreled shotguns saves the lives of countless gamebirds every year. The Case for Longer Barrels Short barrels make a gun light in the muzzle and therefore fast to the target. Too many of us remain enthralled by the notion of speed out of the blocks; we don’t stop to consider that a gun that starts quickly stops just as quickly. If you don’t make a conscious effort to keep a short-barreled gun moving, it will lose momentum and stop. You’ll poke at the bird instead of swinging through it. We want to “paint birds out of the sky” with a smooth stroke, not spatter lead at them like Jackson Pollock. The added weight of a long barrel smooths your swing and helps keep the gun moving for a positive follow-through. How important is follow-through? As one instructor told me as I shot behind a succession of clays: “On a scale of 1 to 10 in importance, forward allowance is a 10. Follow-through is a 10,000.” For field shooting, I like 28-inch barrels on over/unders and side-by-sides (they look better with longer barrels, too), especially in smaller gauges. Pumps and autos, with their longer receivers, can get by with 26-inch barrels, although my preference is for repeaters with 28-inch barrels, or even 30 inches for waterfowl. Shoot a few longer-barreled guns, and you’ll be surprised to find they can get on target quickly enough, yet still add some discipline to your swing. Look at the fastest clay-target game of all, International skeet. An International skeet shooter must hold the butt of the gun in contact with the hipbone until he sees the target, then mount and shoot at a clay traveling 65 miles per hour. The variable delay built into the traps means the bird may rocket from the house the instant the shooter calls “pull,” or up to three seconds later. If ever a game cried out for a quick-draw shotgun, it’s this one, and the winners shoot o/u’s with 28- or even 30-inch barrels. Does Light Make Right? Often, people buy short-barreled guns because they’re lighter than longer-barreled models. Certainly the simplest way for a gunmaker to trim weight is to chop a few inches off the barrel. If you’re shopping for a lightweight, however, you have plenty of other options besides short guns: Beretta’s Whitewing, for instance, is my new favorite “entry-level” o/u. It weighs under 6 pounds in 20-gauge and about 63/4 pounds in 12-gauge, even with 28-inch barrels. A couple of seasons ago, I shot an Ithaca Ultra Featherlight pump for a while that I had special-ordered with a 28-inch barrel. Weighing under 6 pounds, it carried effortlessly in the field and was quick to point but very easy to shoot well. Browning’s Citori Feather is extremely light, but it realizes its weight savings through an alloy receiver, not a short barrel, so it weighs next to nothing yet swings very nicely indeed. Imaginary Advantages People choose barrels for reasons that actually make very little practical difference. Longer barrels have their advantages, but they do not “shoot harder” than shorter ones. Well, not much harder, anyway. There is a slight increase in velocity with longer barrels, on the order of 5 or 6 fps per inch of barrel with most loads. You’ll read too, that longer barrels offer a lengthened sighting plane. Maybe for some folks they do, but when I’m looking over the rib at a target I can’t tell if the gun’s barrel is 20 inches long or 40. Although I’ve confined this discussion primarily to the uplands, it hasn’t escaped my notice that some duck hunters shoot 21- to 24-inch barrels, too. Don’t get me started. Suffice it to say, if you insist on shooting such a gun at waterfowl, bring earplugs for everyone in the blind. Short barrels theoretically handle better in the brush, but I’ve found it’s rarely those last few inches of muzzle that tangle up in the greenery. Bushes, branches, and vines are more likely to grab you in a bear hug than they are to catch your gun’s muzzle. However, sling a long-barreled gun over your shoulder as you so often do in the turkey woods, and it will stick up over your head like an antenna, snagging all manner of overhanging shrubbery. So cut-down barrels have their place, after all—on turkey guns. And that is the long and short of it.

It just depends on what you like, I like shooting 28 and 30 inch. Unless I am shooting quial in thick cover then a 22 or 24 inch. I like the longer barrel because it swings smoother for me. If you are going to be in a blind any less than a 26 inch might iratate your blind mates do to musle blast. Unless it is point and shoot type cover I like a longer barrel. most guys shoot a 28 or 26. Good luck buying a new gun is always fun [ August 18, 2003, 04:39 PM: Message edited by: fattire75 ]

Is it on a game farm or are these wild birds? If a game farm I would tip less I tip on the three factors was the guide a enjoyable guy and give a quality experience quality of the dog work and performance Did he get you into birds one to four guys with one guide I would tip $50 to $20 Have fun what state are you going to

I am in the process of buying a new auto So why a franchi 612? I am looking at the browning gold fusion and the 612. To a lesser extent the Beretta 391 Tenkys because of the cost. Thanks

I would love to see a Montefeltro or AL 48 16 gauge at 6 pounds with a 28 inch barrel. the 16 just patterns better than a 20 with 1 to 1 1/4 oz loads. a Montefeltro, Beretta 391 16 ga or Franchi 616 would be great also. The only two 16 ga worth buying new right now are the Ithaca 37 pump and brownings O/U

I would love to see a AL 48 16 gauge at 6 pounds with a 28 inch barrel. the 16 just patterns better than a 20 with 1 to 1 1/4 oz loads. a Beretta 391 16 ga or Franchi 616 would be great also. The only two 16 ga worth buying new right now are the Ithaca 37 pump and brownings O/U [ August 18, 2003, 12:48 PM: Message edited by: fattire75 ]