Duck hunting shotgun question...

[Ontario Hunter]

I don’t have a camo knife for this reason, but I can’t imagine actually loosing a shotgun after setting it down. Are you saying that they never recovered or simply had a hard time locating them?

I have made this mistake many times with a black shotgun. Haven't lost it yet but close once. Had to help my dog up out of a canal and set the gun down. Ellie likes to parade with a downed dead bird and sometimes I have to go to her to end the show. And it's usually necessary to remove my vest to get a rooster in the gamebag. Yesterday I set the gun down and went to her. Loaded up the bird and turned to find my gun in the grass. Had to look for it for maybe five minutes and I didn't walk away ten yards. Yeah, I coulda and probably shoulda broke her of that as a pup but I guess the dogs deserve to have some fun showing off. Crippled birds always come straight to hand. Dogs know the difference.

Tip: I wear size large jacket but only size medium upland vest. I need the snug fit (hence needing to remove vest to load a pheasant - smaller Huns or sharpies can be shoved into the gamebag through the front loading ports). Gun gets caught in a loose vest when mounting in a hurry. If shooting a jacket with sleeves it's not an issue. I've also had to remove the butt sling stud on my A5 as it was also getting caught in the vest. Don't ask me how, but it was quite an annoyance. The stud stays on the sling in my gamebag (sling is deployed when daily limit is filled or walking out in the dark).

 

[Ontario Hunter]

It is hard not to laugh when one of those big honkers burns in on top of the blind next to you. I have never seen any real damage other than a few full body decoys severely wounded in action.

Over the years I've had to fend off two falling geese with my shotgun. I'm convinced the first one was trying to get me. His head was down and appeared to be aiming at me. Kamikaze honker! I recovered and knocked down another with second shot. Pearl fetched that one up but wouldn't pick up the first one I batted away maybe four feet. "Go get it" "Why? It's right there. Get it yourself." It had died shortly after impact. We were then done for the day as I'd already taken a triple shortly after daybreak. Back then I only had a dozen shell decoys (now two dozen) + a limit of five honkers was a helluva load to haul off the field on my back. Now I have a cart but it's still a lot of work.

When hunting, the shiny wheels come off, shelf folds down, and everything is flattened and concealed underneath the empty camo decoy bag.

 

[Ridge Runner]

I have made this mistake many times with a black shotgun. Haven't lost it yet but close once. Had to help my dog up out of a canal and set the gun down. Ellie likes to parade with a downed dead bird and sometimes I have to go to her to end the show. And it's usually necessary to remove my vest to get a rooster in the gamebag. Yesterday I set the gun down and went to her. Loaded up the bird and turned to find my gun in the grass. Had to look for it for maybe five minutes and I didn't walk away ten yards. Yeah, I coulda and probably shoulda broke her of that as a pup but I guess the dogs deserve to have some fun showing off. Crippled birds always come straight to hand. Dogs know the difference.

Tip: I wear size large jacket but only size medium upland vest. I need the snug fit (hence needing to remove vest to load a pheasant - smaller Huns or sharpies can be shoved into the gamebag through the front loading ports). Gun gets caught in a loose vest when mounting in a hurry. If shooting a jacket with sleeves it's not an issue. I've also had to remove the butt sling stud on my A5 as it was also getting caught in the vest. Don't ask me how, but it was quite an annoyance. The stud stays on the sling in my gamebag (sling is deployed when daily limit is filled or walking out in the dark).

Yeah, been there, still doing that and for the life of me can't figure out how or why of all things that butt sling swivel +/-3 inches forward of the butt finds its way to interfere with mounting a shotgun or rifle.

 

[Dirtdart]

When hunting, the shiny wheels come off, shelf folds down, and everything is flattened and concealed underneath the empty camo decoy bag.

The decoy cart we used was a 14' cargo trailer packed to the gills pulled by a crew cab 4x4 pickup. I never did any solo hunts for geese it was more of a squad size operation.

 

[Jaegerstu]

If you follow the rule of the "Three Bs, Benelli, Berretta, Browning" you should find one that fits you and you shoot well, Due to the elements you may shoot a gun with a coating of your choice. This may make keeping the gun in serviceable condition a bit easier. Shiny blue steel can be reflective and somewhat easier to degrade. Enjoy the quack life, Good Luck and Good Times

 

[roverandbrew]

If you follow the rule of the "Three Bs, Benelli, Berretta, Browning" you should find one that fits you and you shoot well, Due to the elements you may shoot a gun with a coating of your choice. This may make keeping the gun in serviceable condition a bit easier. Shiny blue steel can be reflective and somewhat easier to degrade. Enjoy the quack life, Good Luck and Good Times

I thought the three Bs were Babes, Boos, and Belt Line......Now I know others exist.

 

[Jaegerstu]

Perhaps this pertains to the Two Ps "Priorities and Perspective" or what game you are pursuing and the time of day? Good times

 

[Ridge Runner]

I thought the three Bs were Babes, Boos, and Belt Line......Now I know others exist.

Wow yet another 3 B's:

Booze, Boobs, & Butts
Bacon, Bacon, & Bacon
Bit'h, Bit'h, Bit'h
Bullets, Beans, Bedroll

 

[Dirtdart]

I have posted that my personal goose gun is an O?U. Most of my friends that used autos were switching from X-make/model to a Benelli of some sort and praised them.

The Sauer SL5 made by Breda was not available at that time but since there is a lot of field knowledge in this thread on autos I am curious if any of you guys have run the SL5? I bring this model up because it has what is a suitable finish for waterfowl hunting and one of the more attractive diarrhea guns out there IMHO.

 

[BeeMaa]

@Dirtdart - I know the SL5 requires a break in period of 200 rounds of 1 1/8 oz (minimum load) and to use a minimum of 7/8 oz loads to operate the inertia drive after that.

I know there are some reports of the trigger pin falling out due to improper fit, which is a little concerning. You'll want to check that out.

Not a lot of other complaints after the initial break in. The occasional failure to feed or eject when using light loads which is common with inertia drive actions. Also letting it get gummed up...improper care of the shotgun will always be a problem regardless of the action type.

Field strip and blow it out with air after a day in the field. Lightly lube everything and blow it out again to remove excess lube. Put it back together, cycle the action several times and you should be good to go. After a long week of the muck, mud and water on a hunting trip...do a complete breakdown and give it a good cleaning. I even take out the recoil spring in the stock, disassemble the magazine, remove the trigger group...etc. Full strip down, blow out, lube, wipe down, blow out and reassemble. Good for the next trip.

Pretty pice of timber on that shotgun. Is it 3" or 3.5" chamber?

 

[Ontario Hunter]

A few years ago I had a primer come apart and mess up the guts of my old A5 magnum twelve when shooting clays. One of the fellas loaned me his Benelli auto to finish the last station. I broke all eight targets. "You should buy that gun. Chris wants to sell it." No thanks! I can see why he wanted to get rid of it. That thing kicked like a mule. My old A5 is a pansy by comparison. For one thing the Benelli is too light. A lightweight waterfowl shotgun is an oxymoron. Who needs a light shotgun to sit in a blind? Lightweight = sharper recoil. Also, lightweight shotguns are whipy. They don't swing well. The Benelli is inertia and those kick about as hard as any pump or O/U. Unfortunately, no one makes long recoil system shotguns any longer. My A5 is extremely reliable in all temps but it did require some modification to barrel spring and friction brake setup (don't bother with Browning's instructions - won't work reliably).

 

[Dirtdart]

@Dirtdart - I know the SL5 requires a break in period of 200 rounds of 1 1/8 oz (minimum load) and to use a minimum of 7/8 oz loads to operate the inertia drive after that.

I know there are some reports of the trigger pin falling out due to improper fit, which is a little concerning. You'll want to check that out.

Not a lot of other complaints after the initial break in. The occasional failure to feed or eject when using light loads which is common with inertia drive actions. Also letting it get gummed up...improper care of the shotgun will always be a problem regardless of the action type.

Field strip and blow it out with air after a day in the field. Lightly lube everything and blow it out again to remove excess lube. Put it back together, cycle the action several times and you should be good to go. After a long week of the muck, mud and water on a hunting trip...do a complete breakdown and give it a good cleaning. I even take out the recoil spring in the stock, disassemble the magazine, remove the trigger group...etc. Full strip down, blow out, lube, wipe down, blow out and reassemble. Good for the next trip.

Pretty pice of timber on that shotgun. Is it 3" or 3.5" chamber?

Thank you for the detailed response, especially heads up on the trigger pin. The procedure you describe would be sound for most any new inertia drive I believe.

The hardest use this gun will see is most likely in a dove field as my water fowl hunting days are behind me. I ran a half dozen 1 OZ loads through it as a function check without issue.

This is the 3" model that I bought mainly because I liked the looks of the wood. I have only seen the 3.5" model with synthetic camo furniture. I don't mind the looks of their old school Fred Bear pattern.

 

[BeeMaa]

Thank you for the detailed response, especially heads up on the trigger pin. The procedure you describe would be sound for most any new inertia drive I believe.

The hardest use this gun will see is most likely in a dove field as my water fowl hunting days are behind me. I ran a half dozen 1 OZ loads through it as a function check without issue.

This is the 3" model that I bought mainly because I liked the looks of the wood. I have only seen the 3.5" model with synthetic camo furniture. I don't mind the looks of their old school Fred Bear pattern.

My SBE2 had a few issues despite a proper break-in and regular maintenance IAW the Benelli manual. Wouldn't cycle light 7/8 and 1 oz loads reliably and the dreaded Benelli "click" on a couple of occasions...cost me a few geese. In Benelli's defense, they stated that anything lighter than 1 1/8 oz may not cycle.

All those problems went away when I upgraded to the SBE3. Goes bang every time. Even with light loads.

FYI - Your SL5 shares the same choke pattern as my SBE3. I probably have a few chokes laying around that don't get used if you are interested. I've found the factory chokes on nearly all shotguns to be inconsistent in both measurement and the pattern testing.

 

[HankBuck]

I’ve seen people lose their shotguns on two occasions dude to them being camo. If you lay a camo shotgun on a Levi it disappears. I don’t feel like it is necessary and would only buy black.

@Wiley64 - You make a great point “losing your Camo gun” and I’ve had that happen twice: Once when a client we took duck hunting left the blind (to ‘relieve’ himself) and walked about 50 yrds away into tall marsh grass. He took his Camo shotgun with him but returned 20 minutes later “without it”. I asked him “Where’s your Gun?” And he said “I put it down before I walked into tall grass, came out and couldn’t remember where I laid it down”. Me and another Hunter and the Client spent the next 1/2 hour looking for it - found it….and I was very impressed at just How Good that camo pattern was —- we walked right past it a dozen times before we found it. The 2nd time was similar: we picked up decoys and were in the boat and leaving the area and noticed a gun was missing in the boat - went back “searched” and found it a few feet of where our blind was (laying on the ground in short marsh grass) we just never noticed it as we were gathering the rest of our gear up - easy to do with a camo gun.

 

[HankBuck]

My SBE2 had a few issues despite a proper break-in and regular maintenance IAW the Benelli manual. Wouldn't cycle light 7/8 and 1 oz loads reliably and the dreaded Benelli "click" on a couple of occasions...cost me a few geese. In Benelli's defense, they stated that anything lighter than 1 1/8 oz may not cycle.

All those problems went away when I upgraded to the SBE3. Goes bang every time. Even with light loads.

FYI - Your SL5 shares the same choke pattern as my SBE3. I probably have a few chokes laying around that don't get used if you are interested. I've found the factory chokes on nearly all shotguns to be inconsistent in both measurement and the pattern testing.

@BeeMaa - I have the original SBE and later bought my Son the SBE II. I have had the Benelli “click” happen a few times but learned to just keep some finger pressure on the bolt while sitting in the blind or check it occasionally and it was not a big deal for me but definitely annoying. My SBE cycled more reliably then my Sons SBE II and the SBE II was more “cheaply made” especially the trigger assemble. Mine will cycle all 1 1/8 oz skeet loads down to 1200 fps but the SBE II would not. Benelli claimed the “comfort stock” (recoil reducing) was one of the reasons - more recoil was needed to eject the shell, never a problem with hunting loads but occassionally was with skeet loads. I’ve read (and heard) that the SBE3 was an improvement in quality & reliability. As far as cleaning an SBE - EASY & SIMPLE —- disassembly is so easy that I feel Like-a-skilled-Gunsmith !