While the “year of the duck” became the year of hard luck for many fowlers in parts of the country that were despicably warm still in midwinter, it was not for lack of proper arsenal that the birds weren’t falling. Like next year’s duck counts will no doubt turn out, this year’s crop of waterfowl guns offers a lot of carryover from the year prior, including some ultra-light autoloaders, guns with wicked new paint jobs, a killer Lego kit of a Mossberg pump and an insurrection of well-made guns that won’t kill your kid’s college fund.Stealing the shotgun show at SHOT was the resurrection of an all-time great autoloader, Browning’s venerable humpback A-5, a legacy gun that is back and better-looking than ever. Now if we can just get a cold winter next year to kick us down some of these birds at a reasonable time in the season
Benelli Performance Shop Super Black Eagle II
While not all-new by design but specifically for waterfowl hunters comes what is essentially a Super Black Eagle ll with a tuning kit and aftermarket mods. Polished guts in the gun and a custom trigger are the start, followed by Rob Roberts Custom Triple Threat chokes. Each gun is test fired, and features a Crio barrel with a polished forcing cone to provide consistent patterns while reducing recoil. Also new from Benelli are Super Black Eagle ll models featuring Mossy Oak Duck Blind Camo, and a new M2 in 20 gauge with Realtree MAX 4 Camo; a first for a 20 gauge from Benelli in waterfowl specific camo.
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Beretta A400 Xtreme OPTIFADE
After running this gun all season and piling up snow geese knee-deep with it last week in Arkansas, it’s hard to argue that the Beretta A400 Xtreme is not at the pinnacle of duck and goose gun engineering. I love this gun, from it’s proven rotating bolt head and gas cycling that functions with about any load made, to its softest-kicking status thanks to the Kickoff recoil dampening system. Kickoff uses hydraulics to prevent muzzle rise and to keep hard hitting loads from removing your fillings. With just a quarter-turn the B-Lock forend cap pops off, allowing total takedown in seconds. The gun premiered last year in Realtree MAX 4, and reappears for 2012 with Gore OPTIFADE, a cool sort of honeycomb-mee.
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