Just before I turned twelve, about three or four months prior to that year's dove opener, my father brought home a new Mossberg 500 pumpgun. I was going into my first full hunting season, and he figured I could use a shotgun that could take some abuse. It was a 12 gauge with a 26-inch barrel, on the front of which hung a fancy, knurled knob. Dad could adjust the choke constriction simply by twisting the extension at the end of the muzzle. Back then I knew very little about choke constriction or that funky C-Lect bulb on the end of the barrel. But that 500 was shiny blue, and I couldn't wait to shuck some loads through it.
I was a scrawny twelve-year-old, and when we went out to practice before the dove opener, we both quickly realized that the big pump was physically too much gun for me to mount, swing and shoot. (Frankly, I think Dad secretly bought that gun for himself and got it past Mom by telling her that I needed it to learn the wingshooting trade.)
As an afterthought, I ended up with Dad's sweet little Ithaca SKB 20-gauge side-by-side, which I could handle much better. Dad didn't really seem to mind handing over "the expensive gun," hence my noted suspicions. A very close friend of ours still shoots that Mossberg, and I've shot hundreds of doves, ducks, pheasants, quail and chukars with the Ithaca double--I still take it out now and then during quail season, when I'm missing the old man.
While that old 20 gauge has a special place in my heart, it's not my favorite dove gun. For doves I've favored a 20-gauge autoloadloader ever since I first pulled the trigger on a Smith & Wesson 1000--this time a gun Dad actually did buy for me. I've probably put 3,000 rounds through it in the past twenty-five years, and it keeps cycling--a pretty good indicator of solid design. I'd bet money that it couldn't handle that kind of action during a three-day jam session, though. It takes a special gun to put up with such abuse, and there are only a couple on the market that can handle it. The newest one is the 20-gauge Benelli M2 Field, a slim, trim autoloader that I tried to wear out last March in Argentina.
Technological Leadership
The M2 Field has been around as a 12 gauge since 2004. It's unfair, but the model seems not to get much play--perhaps due to the sophisticated Super Black Eagle guns, which upstage most other smoothbore hunting guns on the market and really opened the eyes of wildfowlers, especially duck and goose hunters, in this county. However, though the M2 Field lacks a little of the SBE's refinement, it's not that far removed in basic design.
The soul of a Benelli selfloader is its inertia operating system. It's this Inertia Driven System, as Benelli calls it, that made Super Black Eagles so popular in this country and abroad. The system is simple, with few parts, and it's as reliable as all get-out. Because all of the shotshell's contents exit the barrel instead of funneling through gas ports to aid in extraction and ejection, there is no cleaner autoloading system. When it comes to high-volume shooting, or shooting in otherwise dirty conditions, such as goose hunting in mudflats, Benellis shuck shells long after the best gas-operated designs have gunked-up and shut down.
Now, forgive me if I take the easy way out, but I don't think I can explain how the inertia system works any clearer than Benelli has in its catalog, from which I have stolen the following:
>> As the bolt assembly moves into battery, the locking head pin moves along a curved track in the bolt body to rotate the steel bolt head into engagement with the steel barrel extension. The cartridge drop lever is down, indicating that the gun is cocked.
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