The hammer-forged, 3” chambered, 28” barrel is stress relieved, most unusually, by cryogenic freezing. The test gun has a one piece alloy action design - some Benellis have a sliding top cover like an old SLR or AK.
I won’t be giving too much away if I note my belief that the Benelli is the finest field semi-automatic yet conceived, but the Beretta still floats my boat for clays. Because no gasses are bled off from the barrel in a Benelli, it does not crud up as fast as most modern semis. The mechanical design is inertia rather than gas operated (like a Beretta or most modern semi-automatics). The Benelli, meantime, is notable for its especially rapid cycling. It certainly looks businesslike.įrankly, I don’t much care what a gun looks like, if it works well – deep, dark and dangerous, or purple spots… it does not matter much to me as long as I can win competitions or shoot birds successfully with it. To use the vernacular of the US gun trade, it’s a ‘black gun’ – meaning its black actioned with a synthetic polymer stock. Few semi-automatics have a better reputation than those made by Beretta and Benelli (who are now part of the same group). I campaign with one (indeed, as I write this, I have just returned from a successful sortie with my venerable, 32” barrelled, Beretta 303). Readers of this magazine will well know that I have a soft spot for a good semi-automatic.
