doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Benelli O/U

Or a Baby Bretton

I have a Baby Bretton and admit it's pretty ugly but that Benelli is, in the words of Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey, "a monstrous horrendum."

Wow, Randy Wakeman really roasted it after shooting one at the SHOT Show. Said it had zero redeeming characteristics. I bet the Benelli crowd buys it though.

I'll bet the Bretton looks pretty good when you are hunting above the tree line, in the alps. You either need a 5 lb 12 gauge, or, you don't.
The really old Brettons are a bit easier to look at. The Brettons that were built in Hungary, with the plastic parts, not so much.

Best,
Ted

The Benelli 'crowd'. The great unwashed tasteless masses that don't know a 'proper' shotgun when they see it and instead choose functionality and durability over the obviously superior 'traditional' formats.

I can see one 'redeeming' feature right off the bat. The gun is not made in Turkey like some of the unusable crap that's often fawned over on this very board only because it meets some definition of having 'proper' form.

I'll accept designation as a member of the Benelli crowd if that means I can recognize guns that are more than adequately functional as delivered, are reliable, and have good if maybe not 'target gun perfect' triggers right out of the box (like everything Browning by the way, but at least they CAN be improved even the Cynergy).

They are going to sell boatloads of these... the Benelli crowd is large and growing.

It gives the appearance of someone that someone tried to build a Lamborghini of a shotgun
(notice that totally unnecessary swooping line along the receiver side), but somehow ended up with a Yugo.
It also appears that the innovative mechanism forced them to have a dramatically longer and wider receiver than "traditional" designs, adding to the ungainly look.

Of course, folks are free to like or dislike whatever they want. I like the traditional look, but I also think this new Benelli O/U gun looks fine. If the gun handles and shoots well, then I think it will look beautiful. Plus, there are a couple million tiny variations of the traditional O/U already out there, so I am happy to see some new styling come on the market.

Watching the video, it sounds like there are a lot of innovative design ideas Benelli has used on the gun. The adjustable stock is a first for O/Us, and is a long overdue feature for O/Us. Kudos to Benelli for building a gun with such adjustability.

I've got a Benelli Ultra Light 20ga. It is a sweet little upland gun. Carries easy, points like a laser, and the inertia action runs a lot cleaner than any gasser I've ever seen.

Glad someone is willing to think out of the box and put out something new in the double gun market, although the ossified-same-thing-done-over-and-over-ad-nauseam-for-a-100-years crowd may pop a vein.

:-)