Fastest/Best gun for clays atm?

[Midwinter]

I just recently got into clays, pheasant hunting was my main focus with my dad. I had done clays before but now it's almost 3-4 times a week. I am still using my dads 20 gauge ithaca featherlight, it's old , and I was really looking to upgrade to something that would fit me better, give me more power and hopefully improve my accuracy and speed. I saw some of these videos of Benellis and I thought they looked pretty amazing, but I also saw some videos of winchesters newest shotguns and they looked pretty amazing themselves. I'm looking for a 12 gauge preferably, would something like the m2 or supersport be any good? Make me the next Tom Knapp...(insert one of his vids)...maybe not...

I was just thinking I have also never owned a automatic shotgun, so this will be new territory for me, so if you have any additional advice on the subject from the aspect of changing from a pump to an auto please let me know!

I love advice, and I also try to get as much info about guns in general as I can.

[agm65ccip]

Personally I think semi-autos are the way to go, now if you talk to some other people and are only going to use this gun for trap/skeet/sporting clays they may say differently. I bought a new M2 a while ago as a compliment to my old Smith&Wesson 1000 for hunting and it works well on the trap/skeet range. When I was in the market for the new gun I did look at remingtons but I was unimpressed by the gas ring system they had. The Smith&Wesson has a big piston and those rings that reminton uses just looked a little weak to me. I will say that the inertia system M2 is much simpler to fully break down to clean than my gas gun. But the brand of the gun is not nearly as important as the person behind it, so no matter what you end up choosing you just have to be familiar with how it works.

 

As far as pump vs auto there are differences. I dont feel like my semi-auto guns kick as hard as the pumps, and I really like not having to think about reloading quickly for a double target. Semi-autos do have a slightly more complicated mechanism, but nothing that you should be afraid of taking apart. Semi-autos also need to be treated like a pretty woman, you have to pay attention and take care of them. Some people will tell you that they wont get a semi auto because they are unreliable, I bet those are the people that only clean their guns once a month. I thoroughly clean my guns after every day of shooting (take apart the gas/inertia system and wipe it down with an oiled cloth) and they perform flawlessly, at the very least all that cleaning will make you very familiar with how your gun works.