28 Gauge Choice
- Thread starter quigley257
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quigley257
Well-Known Member
After much deliberation and research I have decided to forgo the over under in favor of an autoloader. The Tristar Viper G2 Bronze (#24178) 28 gauge gets outstanding reviews across the board. Tristar just released a new version of it called the G2 PRO (#24268). It appears to have fancier wood and different checkering than the previous versions as well as a 3" chamber. The price jumped almost $200 over the original version but It's a beautiful gun with much nicer wood. I got to handle one and give it a once-over on a recent trip and was more than happy with what I saw and felt. It seemed to fit me well and weighed under 6lbs. It seems like a great alternative to the Benelli Ultra for less than half the price.
Browning was making a BPS that was like the Ithaca 37. You can't find them any long either.
Prairie Sasquatch
Well-Known Member
My buddy has one in .410 and it's worked great for him. I think you will enjoy it.
quigley257
Well-Known Member
It had better come with a "sweet setup" guarantee for that kind of money.
Although I had shot several 28ga shotties, my first owned 28ga was a NIB found in lgs Browning BPS Ducks Unlimited Edition. Since mid-70s, I've collected SKB O/U and SxS with silver receivers. Most of all, I treasure those in the 28ga. Easy carry, sweet swinging, punch above their gauge, can't put it down, definitional "go to" upland bird scattergun. Descriptively pictured in Merriam-Websters next to "S-W-W-W-E-E-E-E-E-T."
Could be out scoutN on a rainy day, still can find em, almost Mint condition, at Scheels, Cabela's etc, where some OleBoy has tipped outta the canoe. Left to some kin that don't care about shootN. They'll go for barely just over 1/2 price, of same brand new rig. Years of huntN left in em. They are a piece of Italy's best work. Good luck.
Looking at the image of your Red Label, its buttstock appears to be that of a gun which I could shoot well. My own Ruger O/U was quite a different story, however, and one this forum's readers may find interesting.
Twenty something years ago, after years of competitive skeet shooting, I migrated into shooting sporting clays and decided I needed a new scatter gun for that endeavor. So I ordered a Ruger Woodside 12 Gauge with 30" barrels and discovered when I took delivery thereof that the d&mned thing came with an automatic safety. Jack O'Conner once opined that a break action double gun with an automatic safety was "... an abomination in the face of the Lord." My sentiments exactly! Ruger included a coupon for disabling the auto safety for $15 but that didn't include the cost of shipping and insurance so, being an inherently cheap SOB, I took matters into my own hands. I removed the stock from the action, mounted a fresh 32 TPI blade in my blind hacksaw handle and after about 30 attempts to put teeth to metal finally was able to make myself saw off the extension to the barrel selection link that served no purpose other than to push the safety on whenever the tang lever was rotated to open the action. Whew! Brand new gun and I'm already butchering it. But that was just the beginning of my butchery, i.e. #1.
The next day I was out to the sporting clays range for a 100 bird practice session. I was absolutely smoking all the singles and most of the first birds on doubles (both true and report) but missing a good deal of the second birds on doubles. Soon I noticed that on my second shots the wad was flying a higher trajectory than on the first targets of the pairs. So I finished the round by dismounting and remounting the gun between shots on the doubles targets and was breaking most of the second targets. That was #2 of my Ruger revelations. By the time I finished the 100 targets I had realized that my right hand on the pistol grip was uncomfortably cramped, #3, and I had a painful blood blister of the flesh under the second bone of my trigger finger, #4. The following weekend I was scheduled to shoot in a registered tournament at the same sporting clays facility and really wanted to do so with my new Ruger Woodside. Something needed to be done!!
When I got home from the practice round I compared the Ruger's stock to my Belgian Browning Superposed stock and there was a good 15 to 20 degrees difference in the rake of their recoil pads, i.e. the length of pull from trigger to the top of the pad vs the length of pull from trigger to the bottom of the pad was nearly identical on the Browning but was over an inch longer to the bottom of the pad on the Ruger. All I could figure was that Ruger wanted to give the gun a "racy" look, but they only accomplished in giving it an inability to stay planted on the shooter's shoulder. So I rigged a soft clamping cradle to the Ruger's stock and locked it into my cutoff bandsaw such that it matched the angle of the Browning stock and hacked off the difference. I then replaced the 1/2" Ruger recoil pad with a 1-1/4" thick KICK-EEZ Sorbothane recoil pad to extend the stock's original length of pull to better match my body. Butchery #2 complete.
I then completely stripped all the godawful bowling-pin shiny lacquer off of the stock and forend, rasped more than 1/2" of wood out of the stock's right side flute (behind and above the pistol grip's checkering) until it finally was comfortable for my oversized right hand (depending on the manufacturer's standard I wear a XXL to XXXL sized glove.) But that left the stock looking grossly asymmetrical so I had to deepen the left side of the stock's flute similarly and reshape the forward comb to appropriate shape. Butchery #3 complete.
The problem with the blood blister was a combination of the stock not fitting my right hand and the amount of trigger over travel resulting in a serious trigger finger pinch between the trigger and the trigger guard riser that extends up concentric with the curvature of the trigger. So there was no choice but to take the same blind hacksaw I had used on butchery #1 and saw off the pretty little concentric riser, leaving a trigger guard roomy enough for my oversized trigger finger. Butchery #4 complete.
The rest of that night was spent filing out the roughness left in the trigger guard with a set of jeweler's files, finishing it off with 400 grit wet sandpaper, reblueing the bare metal and hand rubbing the first of many tongue oil coats into the gun's wooden parts. By the weekend the wood had enough protection (3 coats) in case the tournament got caught up in having to shoot during a rainstorm (which didn't happen) but it took me months of hand rubbing the tongue oil before the finish looked even better than the factory original varnish.
The lesson here is that only a lucky few can take a factory gun off the rack and shoot it well. If you're not comfortable butchering a brand new expensive firearm, like I did, for God's sake take it to a good stock maker/gunsmith and get it properly fitted to you. If the gun is truly an expensive one I'd advise removing the factory original walnut, storing it and have a replacement stock built and fitted to your own physique and shooting needs so that no devaluation to your initial investment will be suffered. Even with the matched-weight 20, 28 gauge and .410 bore lightweight Briley sub-gauge tubes and hard case I only have about $3K in my Ruger so I didn't hesitate to butcher it up fresh out of the box. And it still looks just as good as new to the extent that no-one has ever noticed my evil gunsmithing deeds.
Prairie Sasquatch
Well-Known Member
This is the way to buy O/U if you can find the one you want. If I remember I paid $800 cash for my 28 gauge 686 used and trade of a 12 gauge 1100 which I had probably put 80,000 rounds through. That 1100 was tired.
The best part was that I bought the 1100 for $275 with a slug barrel. Sold the slug barrel for $75, shot the gun for 20 years and traded it for $300 towards the 686.
A 686 new at the time was about $1700 so I figured I came out ok.
That' is Awesome!! Nice deal, good hunting!
Back in the day (ok, 5 decades ago...) I did fair bit of load off my 600 Jr for my trap gun. I've never loaded for a semi auto for shotguns. Thinking about maybe getting a 600 Jr for my 28 to load for it.
Question being is it pretty straight forward to load for a semi auto shotgun? Main concern would be feeding I guess
Question being is it pretty straight forward to load for a semi auto shotgun? Main concern would be feeding I guess
quigley257
Well-Known Member
It's been my experience that the MECs do a hood job resizing the hulls for reliable feeding.
