Who abuses their nice shotguns (Benelli/berretta/$1200-$2000)

Z

z7

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I’ve been doing a little duck hunting this year from a kayak and a small plastic John boat/pond prowler thing and my 870 had been abused

Frozen freshwater marsh mud everywhere, soaking wet, etc

The ice is causing feeding problems with the flipper

I’ve heard reports, and watched the “grand thumb” shotgun ice test and the beneli m2 did well in the first round “freezing rain” test

I want a new shotgun and have my eyes on a beneli m2 or sbeiii, but I might stroke if it was soaking wet covered in marsh mud. How many of you all abuse your nice shotguns?
 
I don’t really count taking firearms out in freezing rain abuse, if that’s what I got it for. If you don’t maintain it when your done, the neglect, can turn into abuse I suppose.

Any firearm purchased for duck hunting should be expected to see less than ideal conditions because that’s when duck hunting seems to be the best.

If you want a real nice shotgun for hunting that only see’s great weather, forget about ducks, dove are hunted under much more pleasant conditions.
 
I used a $3000 Bernadelli SxS 20 ga game gun for a few hundred rounds of sporting clays which is 10,000 plus rounds fired. It was often in 90+ degree heat and I sweat pure sulfuric acid.

Even rigorous maintenance was not enough to keep it t perfect. It had all sorts of scars on the wood and a few spots of bluing loss from my sweat and where I carried the gun on the case hardened receiver.

One of the club members loved that gun so much he kept bothering me to sell it to him. I told him how I used it but he didn’t care. Said it had honest battle scars. So I sold it to him for what I had paid.

It was a pretty cool gun. True sidelock. Straight grip. Checkered butt. 25” barrels choked Imp/Mod. Elegant and thin beaver tail forend. Fine line checkering. Double triggers. Concave rib. Weighed 5 1/2 lbs.
 
Abuse and honest use are two vastly different things. Abuse is not cleaning, dropping, overloading, ignoring issues.
I have shot ducks in freezing rain, muddy spray and walked miles in weed fields with many shotguns. All got meticulously cleaned after use. Normal wear and tear cannot be avoided but a "weathered patina" gives character to a hunting arm.
I had a friend who did abuse his duck gun. Shot it dirty, gave it a shot of WD40 (nooo!!) and threw it in his trunk, no case.
Working in the gun shop for years I saw ignored and abused guns galore. Ideally a day or two before a season would begin, bozo would bring a bunked up gun in and say he needed it for a hunt. Easy money (at double rate).
Today's guns will take a surprising amount of use, abuse , if you prefer, and keep going with minimal maintenance. Please don't "abuse" the nice classics. But, it is your money.
(My 1975 870 TB has hunted deer, duck, fur and feather and been used almost weekly for trap all these years and looks pretty good).
 
jmorris said:
I don’t really count taking firearms out in freezing rain abuse, if that’s what I got it for. If you don’t maintain it when you’re done, the neglect, can turn into abuse I suppose.

Any firearm purchased for duck hunting should be expected to see less than ideal conditions because that’s when duck hunting seems to be the best.

If you want a real nice shotgun for hunting that only see’s great weather, forget about ducks, dove are hunted under much more pleasant conditions.
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Aint that the truth. A good decade ago I was duck hunting with my brother and I had sunk into some muck where I had been standing in my waders. When we got ready to move on I couldn’t pull one leg up, when I went to step my other foot would just sink so I took my less than one year old Beretta A391 and put it flat in the water so I could step on it to get my other foot unstuck. My brother was in disbelief, but I really didn’t have another option.

I have had to beat ice off of that gun more than a few times. I maintain it well but yeah, if it goes duck hunting it takes a beating. For better or worse I don’t do much of any duck hunting anymore so that particular gun is fairly neglected nowadays.
 
IMO the Benelli M2 is the closest you'll get to an 870's ability to take abuse and still shoot. Last I looked price was around $1300. A new 870 is $500-$600 now. The only reason I'd take an 870 over a Benelli in harsh conditions is that if it fell overboard and was lost, I wouldn't be out as much money. Reliability, even in bad conditions is a tie IMO and when you factor in operator error with a pump the M2 is the winner.

The SBE's tend to be pretty reliable with most any shell you'll hunt waterfowl with. But some of them choke on the very lightest loads. I wouldn't shoot anything under 1 1/8" in a SBE. The M2 won't take 3 1/2" shells, but I've not found a need for them. And it handles lighter loads better than the SBE.

I have a couple of the older M1's. One in particular has been used in some pretty rough conditions and it. The main difference between the M1 and M2 is stock design. I'd love to have a M2, but as long as my M1 keep working I can't justify trading up.
 
I have pushed through brush and cattails and hunted in rain and snow with my Beretta 686 and Browning A5, new model. with no issues. A few scratches here and there but I think guns are made to be used. The same with several other shotguns I have owned. The better brands do perform better in my experience. I may have slipped and fallen in mud and snow a time or two also. It's important to have something handy to clean the barrel with. I also use a beat-up Charlies Daly DU SA Special in Camo. That one takes a beating. My grandson just borrowed it for trap shooting even though I offered him my best guns.
My buddy used a SBE and over many years it has never given him a problem. My A5 is pretty much the same system. All the big B's are great guns.
 
My shotguns get wet and muddy. Hunting saltwater is brutal! I carry several cans of WD40 to flush everything at the end of the day. Seems to work just fine! :)
 
Love my 870's, but my goto everything shotgun is my SBEII. Primarily bought it for ducks. After shooting it now for 15 yrs??, i don't use 3 1/2" shells for anything. They just don't pattern as well as a good 3" shell. Even when we go to the Pamlico sound in layout boats after the large sea ducks. It's 3" shells with #4 that pattern the best. Any swamp work for woodies I'll take a good 2 3/4" load hands down. If I had it to do all over, I would buy an M2 and never look back.
I've used it to break through ice to clear out a landing zone, pull myself out of tight spots in mud or ice, push or guide the boat around obstacles. Tough use... yes. But I wouldn't consider it abuse.
I do coat the firing pin and bolt head with a very very thin coat of grease. I've seen a couple of Benelli's fail to fire the first shot in freezing rain. I think water got into the firing pin hole in the bolt face and caused the misfire. It always fired the second time. So I swipe a small dab of grease to plug up the firing pin hole and I've never had an issue myself in icy conditions.

Good luck,
Steve
 
I used (abused?) a Ruger Red Label 12 ga O/U for everything for 20 years, waterfowl in the swamp, chukar in the Idaho flood basalts, quail in the Arizona cactus, mountain quail in the Sierra Nevada….
It got scratched, dinged, rusted, broke the stock wrist, molded, and ovalized one barrel in a fall.

Ruger replaced the stock, had the barrel pounded back round, cold blued the rust, and refinished the stock.

Felt kinda bad when I finally sold it, I got top dollar for it at a gunshow.

Now its a krylon painted 870 for hunting.
 
earlthegoat2 said:
I used a $3000 Bernadelli SxS 20 ga game gun for a few hundred rounds of sporting clays which is 10,000 plus rounds fired. It was often in 90+ degree heat and I sweat pure sulfuric acid.

Even rigorous maintenance was not enough to keep it t perfect. It had all sorts of scars on the wood and a few spots of bluing loss from my sweat and where I carried the gun on the case hardened receiver.

One of the club members loved that gun so much he kept bothering me to sell it to him. I told him how I used it but he didn’t care. Said it had honest battle scars. So I sold it to him for what I had paid.

It was a pretty cool gun. True sidelock. Straight grip. Checkered butt. 25” barrels choked Imp/Mod. Elegant and thin beaver tail forend. Fine line checkering. Double triggers. Concave rib. Weighed 5 1/2 lbs.
Click to expand...
Bernardelli made some wonderful doubles. That 20 sidelock would be one of the nicest. :cool::cool::cool:

Not abused, but heavily used, this French Robust No.4 16 gauge now looks like I used it as a club to kill everything, but it's still a great quail and grouse gun.
RnuNC6i.jpg

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zCkLypY.jpg
 
I used a beautiful Beretta BL4 duck hunting in the salt marsh once. Even though I cleaned it thoroughly after the hunt the bluing on the barrels was spotted. Learned the hard way to take a beater to the salt marsh...
 
One man's gentle handling is another man's abuse.

"May we all know that nothin' ain't cool 'til you wear the new off"
 
mcb said:
One man's gentle handling is another man's abuse.

"May we all know that nothin' ain't cool 'til you wear the new off"
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I don’t think this is a subjective question abuse is abuse, rough it, through it around don’t clean or oil it. Dipped in water and it still works fine.
 
It will have to be my Benelli M4 tactical. A very sweet semi
 
Mercy Me said:
I don’t think this is a subjective question abuse is abuse, rough it, through it around don’t clean or oil it. Dipped in water and it still works fine.
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If its not subjective then you will be able to draw a clear and definitive line that separates abuse from non-abuse. That would be pretty hard to do when we as a group can't even agree on how often a gun should be cleaned. Some subscribe to cleaning it after every use whether that be one shot or a 1000. Some only clean when accuracy or function start to degrade. Just one of many examples where we differ on use and handling.
 
luv2safari said:
Bernardelli made some wonderful doubles. That 20 sidelock would be one of the nicest. :cool::cool::cool:

Not abused, but heavily used, this French Robust No.4 16 gauge now looks like I used it as a club to kill everything, but it's still a great quail and grouse gun.
RnuNC6i.jpg

zCkLypY.jpg
Click to expand...
Upland bird hunting has always been my favorite form of hunting. To hunt like that with a good dog is icing on the cake. My dad and I have walked many miles after grouse over the years. We lost dad in early January of this year. Another Vietnam veteran gone. So these pictures kinda hit home in different ways. We always had retrievers for hunting. Dad had goldens. That is a beautiful pup you have there. Give him an extra ear scratching from me. And my dad loved his LC Smiths. His favorite was a 16ga also.

Thanks for the pics!
Steve
 
jmorris said:
Yeah and cleaning a shotgun is easier than eating a duck...
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One guy I know buy cheap shotguns, normally used, and when we get back from a hunt he literally sticks the end of a cut off water hose in the barrel turns the water on, works the action a couple times. Then he just takes it inside and lets it dry out, sprays it down with rem oil a day or two later and moves on.

When (not if) it starts malfunctioning fairly often he just buys another one and sells that one.

That’s the abuse the op was talking about, imo. But like I said he buys really cheap guns for the duck hunting.
 
I don't own any nice shotguns anymore, but I also don't own any that used to be nice. I've owned a few pretty decent ones over the years and in nearly every case they left my possession with more wear than when they arrived...but I never felt bad about it because they did what I'd asked them to do.

The only exception was when I traded for a brand new Red Label 20 with the English stock at a gun show. Had been wanting one to hunt bunnies and the occasional quail or pheasant with and finally got one. Then I got second guessing whether I could handle it getting dinged, scratched, etc...
Sold it about 2 aisles over from where I got it.
 
Shotguns that I inherited from my dad, from dad, whiuch included my gand dad's shot guns, I would not abuse. They are nit in pristene condition but they are old enough and have some wear that I would not want to abuse them further.

I do not do a bunch of bird hunting but I'd use any currently produced shotgun for bird hunting regardless of the weather conditions. Of course, I'd clean the gun carefully after each hunting session.

I shot competitive skeet for many years and prefer to shoot an over/under for the most part.

But, around our hobby horse farm, I keep a pump gun (Rem 870) on the ready for undesirable critters. These guns get a bit rougher handling than my target guns or hunting guns might see.
 
cfullgraf said:
Shotguns that I inherited from my dad, from dad, whiuch included my gand dad's shot guns, I would not abuse. They are nit in pristene condition but they are old enough and have some wear that I would not want to abuse them further.

I do not do a bunch of bird hunting but I'd use any currently produced shotgun for bird hunting regardless of the weather conditions. Of course, I'd clean the gun carefully after each hunting session.

I shot competitive skeet for many years and prefer to shoot an over/under for the most part.

But, around our hobby horse farm, I keep a pump gun (Rem 870) on the ready for undesirable critters. These guns get a bit rougher handling than my target guns or hunting guns might see.
Click to expand...
That’s a family heirloom that just happen to be a shotgun.
 
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