 
Will a sporting model really break more targets than a field gun? Yes — if you’re willing to practice. Although sporting targets are supposed to simulate game birds, they are still clay targets. Where real birds change direction, accelerate, and climb, clays stay on course, slow down, and drop. A long-barreled, heavier gun helps you swing through targets and dampens the recoil of 100-bird days. If you shoot seriously, burning thousands of rounds in practice and competition, a top-quality sporting gun will withstand heavy use, not just for you, but for your heirs. Here, in no particular order, are eight of the best: The Hot Shot Beretta DT10 As befits the newest player in the high- end target gun world, Beretta’s DT10 is the choice of some very young top guns. The U.S.A.’s Vincent Hancock, still a teenager, has set world records while winning international skeet championships with his DT10. Haley Dunn, our Pan Am skeet gold medalist, has shot the same DT10 since she was sixteen. The checkering on Dunn’s gun is worn flat from training and international competition, testimony to thousands of rounds of practice. Introduced in 1999, the DT10 is a production version of the custom-shop ASE, a gun that was becoming too expensive to make. The DT10 makes use of the same super-strong Kersten crossbolt action found on all Beretta high-grade guns. The system is both strong and very low-profile, making the DT10 one of those over-and-unders that sit low in your hands and point as naturally as a finger. The gun has a lively feel, suiting it to the lightning-fast international games as well as sporting clays. “DT” stands for “detachable trigger”; the trigger group drops out of the gun in case you need to make a quick repair. The DT10 is strictly an as-is proposition — there are no special orders as there are with Krieghoff and Perazzi. However, the DT10 sells for a few thousand dollars less than the Krieghoff and Perazzi. That it is a production gun makes it a more, not less, remarkable achievement: You can buy this gun off the shelf and start winning with it. Beretta DT10, $6,775; 800-237-3882; berettausa.com The Italian Stallion Caesar Guerini Summit Sporting Caesar Guerinis are the new Italian gun on the block, and within their middle price range they’ve got the looks and the “it” factor that attract a crowd at the club. When I showed up at the skeet field with the Summit Sporting model, my friend Mary borrowed it, outshot her husband, and ordered a Summit of her own. Guerini has staked out the $2,000-$5,000 over-and-under niche, appealing to the customer who wants to move up to a well-made gun with a higher degree of fit and finish than the garden-variety Citori. Brothers Giorgio and Antonio Guerini are members of Brescia’s first clan of gunmakers, the Rizzini family, which explains why Guerini guns bear a strong mechanical resemblance to some Rizzini and Fausti guns. The Guerinis’ partner, Wes Lang, is the American face of the company, maintaining the Guerini USA offices within a short drive of his duck blinds on Chesapeake Bay. Lang runs all stateside operations, and has quickly developed a reputation for outstanding customer service. No stranger to hunting or serious clay target competition, Lang knows what American shooters want, and his Italian partners respect his input. For instance, this year at SHOT Show he showed me a new .410 sporting gun with 32-inch barrels, an American small-bore gun nut’s dream. My own dream Guerini? A 32-inch-barrel 20-gauge for soft recoil on the clays course all summer and for doves come September. Caesar Guerini Summit Sporting, $3,200; 410-901-1131; gueriniusa.com The Target Machine Krieghoff K-80 One of the world’s premier target guns, the K-80 is descended from Remington’s short-lived Model 32. With its sliding latch action, very low profile, and separated barrels, the 32 looked like no other shotgun in the world back in 1932. Its advanced design couldn’t save it from the Great Depression, however; the 32 lasted only twelve years with fewer than six thousand made. In the late fifties, a group of American and German shooters took the Model 32 design to Krieghoff, a gunmaking firm whose personnel had escaped to West Germany after World War II. In 1957, the K-32 was born. Longtime Krieghoff dealer Pete Dupont of Vero Beach, Florida, was one of the group who worked with Krieghoff to turn the K-32 and its successor, the very similar K-80, into one of the world’s finest target guns. “Every time I would suggest a change the Germans would say yes, we can do that for four marks (about a dollar),” he recalls. “We made enough four-mark changes to turn it into a $10,000 gun.” Krieghoff uses the highest grade materials: tool steel in the triggers and Austrian Böhler steels for the barrels. In addition, K-80 receivers accept a variety of stocks and barrels, so a sporting clays gun quickly converts to trap or small-bore skeet. Pick up a K-80 and you immediately feel its immense strength and solidity. Aesthetically, the K-80 may be more beast than beauty with its angular lines and separated barrels, but there is no denying its performance as a target-grinding machine. Krieghoff K-80, $10,695; 610-847-5173; krieghoff.com The Elegant Starter Browning Silver Sporting Micro One top sporting clays competitor who shot and won with Browning gas autos for years described them to me privately as “plumbing,” meaning they were made of pipes and valves and weren’t really, you know, guns. To which I would reply: Get over it. Plumbing ranks among the top ten conveniences of modern life. Gas autoloaders are probably number eleven on the list. They deliver so much less felt recoil than over-and-unders that whenever I shoot one, I wonder why we use anything else. The Browning Silver Sporting Micro makes a great choice for smaller-sized new shooters who want to learn without getting beaten up. I’d like a Silver Sporting Micro for starting women and children. (I’d sneak it off to the course and shoot it myself, too.) The Silver Sporting Micro’s stock adjusts from 13½ inches out to 14¼ by means of spacers included with the gun, and the pistol grip is specially contoured for smaller hands. Weighing just seven pounds in 12-gauge with a 28-inch barrel, it’s long, light, and easy to shoot well. Browning Silver Sporting Micro, $1,132; 800-333-3288; browning.com The Glamour Gun Perazzi MX2000 Perazzi earned brief public notoriety in 2006 as Vice President Cheney’s gun of choice for bobwhites and attorneys, but it has been a household name among target shooters since the 1960s. Italian Ennio Mattarelli won a gold medal in trap at the ’64 Tokyo Olympics with a gun built for him by Daniele Perazzi, who had gone into business for himself only three years earlier. In 1968 Mattarelli and Perazzi collaborated on a second gun, the MX8, which featured readily interchangeable stocks and one of the first screw-in chokes seen on any gun. For American shooters, Perazzi became the last word in high-end target guns. Sleek and dynamic, the Perazzi plays hare to the Krieghoff K-80’s tortoise in the world of high-end target guns. “Hare” doesn’t quite do the Perazzi justice; it’s more of an Energizer Bunny. There are Perazzis still running strong with over a million rounds through them. The Perazzi combination of agility and strength has earned it numerous Olympic medals, including three in the hands of America’s best female shooter, Kim Rhode. Perazzi MX2000, $12,900; 626-334-1234; perazzi.com The Old Reliable Beretta 391 Beretta rules as the dominant autOloader in sporting clays competition. The 391 combines pointability and soft recoil into a reasonably priced package that can take you up against high-dollar over-and-unders with confidence. Beretta 391s are famously reliable, still ticking long after other gas guns start to jam. They are the only gas guns that pass muster among Argentine dove outfitters whose clients may shoot fifteen hundred or more rounds in a day, which speaks volumes about the gun’s dependability. I put one thousand-plus rounds through the first 391 I tested without so much as cleaning the bore, and it never stopped working. On the sporting field, the 391 has a different, sort of elongated feel, especially compared with a more compact over-and-under with traditional “between the hands” balance. Coupled with its slender forearm, the light, long feeling makes the 391 a natural, responsive pointer. “It’s just an easy gun to move to the target,” Scott Robertson told me once. A longtime 391 shooter, Robertson has eight National Sporting Clay Championships to his credit. Beretta includes pads of different thicknesses and a shim kit to alter stock fit with every gun. With a little tinkering, I’ve been able to match the dimensions of my custom stocked over-and-under, and while I hate to admit it, I might shoot the Beretta a little better than my “good” sporting gun. The 391’s popularity among sporting shooters means there are a ton of aftermarket gadgets available for it: stock weights, magazine cap weights, trigger shoes, bolt closers and many others. You can also find specialized cleaning and disassembly tools for it. Beretta 391, $1,850; 301-283-2191; berettausa.com The Traditionalist CSMC Model 21 If I stumbled into several thousand dollars, I’d have a Model 21 made for sporting clays. Some clubs hold side-by-side events, but I’d shoot mine all the time. Heavier than most American doubles and incredibly strong, the 21 would make the perfect platform for a side-by-side target gun. In fact, more than seventy years ago, a 21 (a 16-gauge at that) was the last side-by-side to win a major clay target event in the United States. The original 21s were introduced in 1930 by Winchester. The gun lasted into the eighties, although it could only be ordered as a limited custom shop offering by the end. Fortunately, the Model 21 didn’t die; it just moved down the road from New Haven, where Winchester had been producing it, to New Britain, Connecticut. Tony Galazan’s Connecticut Shotgun Manufacturing Co., which breathed new life into A.H. Fox shotguns, bought all of the manufacturing machinery, tooling, and parts for the Model 21 from the U.S. Repeating Arms Co. The Model 21s range from lightly engraved field guns all the way up to the stunning Grand American-grade guns with gold inlaid bird dogs. I’d go with the all-business base model 21-1. It would be a 12-gauge, with 30-inch vent ribbed barrels, pistol grip, and semi-beavertail forearm. I might not shoot any better, but I would look really good on the course. CSMC Model 21, $12,500; 860-225-6581; connecticutshotgun.com The Cold War Classic Merkel 2000 EL Sport From the end of World War II to the fall of the Berlin Wall, Merkel shotguns represented a strange contradiction: They were genuine fine shotguns made behind the Iron Curtain. Of course, the guns predate Communism (the company was founded in Suhl, Germany, in 1898), and they outlasted Communism there as well. In 1991, GSI Inc. in Trussville, Alabama, began importing Merkel guns into the United States and it remains Merkel’s American importer to this day. Like most German guns, Merkel’s are ruggedly handsome rather than beautiful. The side clips on the receiver give an impression of strength that is completely warranted: The Kersten crossbolt that locks the action will outlast two or three generations of owners. Merkels may be solid, but they swing fluidly. It’s a surprisingly light and nimble gun. The unusual three-piece forearm is quite slim, letting the barrels nestle deep into your front hand for easy, natural pointing. It’s a rare blend of strength and grace that’s a treat to shoot. Truth be told, the Merkel 2000 EL Sport may not be the gun to take you to the next level of serious competition. It lacks some of the bells and whistles of other sporting guns — choke tubes, for instance, long forcing cones, back-bored barrels, and all the rest. So what? The Merkel 2000 EL Sport offers its own style of Continental class. If your taste runs a little richer, there’s the 2001 EL Sport decorated with the deep-relief hunting scenes that are typical of fine German firearm engraving. Merkel 2000 EL Sport, $7,695; 2001 EL Sport, $8,995; 205-655-8299; gsifirearms.com |
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