Best Waterfowl Guns for 2012

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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Gun Stocks: Part IV

Reprinted from Chuck Hawks, for your information.


Light weight is often cited as a benefit of synthetic stocks, and laminated stocks are often criticized as being heavy. But in fact, most synthetic, laminated, and solid wood stocks weigh about the same when built to the same pattern. There is little advantage to very light stocks in any case, as rifles need a certain amount of weight to swing smoothly, balance correctly, and limit recoil. If a stock is made too light, it simply has to be weighted with lead or some other material so that correct balance, swing, and recoil control are maintained.

Synthetic stocks do have some significant drawbacks. One of the most important is that they are flexible, particularly the forearm of one-piece injection molded stocks. They lack the natural rigidity of wood, so if a hunter shoots with a sling, for instance, the forearm can flex, alter the bedding of the barrel, and change the point of impact of the bullet. Even changing the strength or angle of one's grip, or using a rest, can change the point of impact of a rifle with an injection molded stock. Laid-up fiberglass stocks with unidirectional fibers (not the common "chopper gun" type of construction with short random direction fibers) are stiffer than injection molded stocks and generally more accurate.
Synthetics can warp in hot weather and freeze in cold weather. In extremely cold temperatures injection molded stocks become so brittle that they can literally shatter. In very hot weather black synthetic stocks can become literally too hot to handle with bare hands. But the legend of their strength and climate resistance persists.

Nor has anyone in the shooting press, so far as I know, questioned the necessity for a waterproof stock.Few hunters regularly take their rifles swimming. I, for example, have been hunting in rainy Western Oregon since 1964 without a bit of water damage to my various rifles, all of which wear walnut stocks. The factory finish on a walnut stock is usually all the weather protection required.

Everyone in the industry knows these things; they just don't want to address them. The lack of stiffness in most synthetic stocks is a serious problem because it degrades the accuracy of the rifle. To help rectify that problem, some gun makers offer synthetic stocks (at extra cost) made of exotic materials with aluminum or other internal reinforcement.

The Weatherby Accumark stock, for example, is made of a combination of Aramid, graphite unidirectional fibers, and fiberglass molded around an aluminum bedding and forearm insert. Such stocks are stiff and strong, but much more expensive than simple synthetic stocks.

Other issues are the clammy feel (especially when cold and or wet) of synthetics, and the fact that they are not very attractive. Most synthetic stocks look like they were cut out of the inner bottom of a cheap fiberglass boat. When combined with the crude matte metal finish used on so many rifles with synthetic stocks (another cost cutting measure sold to consumers as an anti-reflection measure), the result can be a firearm without any aesthetically redeeming virtue or even a shred of individuality.
Factory made rifles are equipped with stocks designed to fit the average person from about 5' 8" to about 6' in height. However, there is some variation between brands and sometimes between different models of the same brand. The conformation of the individual shooter's upper body (arm length, shoulder size, chest size, etc.) and the shape of the face (long, wide, flat, big nose, high cheekbones, etc.) will determine which stock fits best. The very tall or long armed shooter may require a longer than average length of pull, shooters with thin faces generally find a thicker comb more comfortable, and so on.

Two stocks with identical length of pull, drop at comb, and drop at heel from different manufacturers may feel quite different in practice. The thing to do is to search until you find the rifle stock that fits best.

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