Classic field guns may describe the other RBL guns but they have made the 12 ga RBL into two separate versions - a lighter one for field use and a heavier one for targets (winged or clay). Although not stated as such, I believe that the shorter barrel lengths are viewed as a hunting set up and they try to make the gun come in at 7-71/2 lbs while the longer barrels are either shooting waterfowl (heavy loads) or clay games so are built correspondingly heavier. They clearly are building guns for the sporting clays market, as are a few other sxs manufacturers, but they certainly have a large number of features desired for this purpose at an attractive price.
Although I enjoy shooting the odd round of skeet with a light sxs, to shoot a sporting clays course it is much preferred to have a gun heavier than the 7 lb level typical of 12 ga guns used for hunting. An 8 lb gun is much more effective at managing the recoil that one has over the course of 100 plus clays in a day and 30” - 32” barrels provide much better sight alignment than a shorter gun on longer target presentations. The combination of weight, well distributed, and barrel length allows much easier shooting than a typical field gun. Properly set up, a heavy gun can still have excellent swing dynamics and not fell like a log. Pigeon guns, a special adaptation of a field gun, would fall into this category where they are typically pushing 8 lbs but have excellent feel.
Realistically, a well set up sxs is inferior to an o/u for most target games but at least with this type of combination the playing field is a little more level.
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