My favorite shotgun is a Beretta 686 Silver Pigeon Sporting model with 30” barrels. It’s my favorite not because it’s a Beretta and all that comes with a shotgun made by the world’s oldest continually operating family owned business.
It’s not the Italian design and craftsmanship. Or how well it fits when I shoot it. Or how smooth it swings out on a clays course.
It’s my favorite, and I assume this is true for a lot of people, because it happens to be my first gun.
I bought this shotgun back in the early 90s when I stumbled on it sitting on the used rack in a gun store in Smyrna, Delaware. The price tag was $900, which was a lot at the time, and certainly a whole lot for me at that time.
Not knowing much about guns and what to look for in a used gun, shotgun or otherwise, I asked my friend Phil if he would come take a look at it for me.
Phil was the one that introduced me to shooting. Or more accurately, I introduced myself to shooting via Phil after finding out he was a shooter. I basically invited myself to shoot by blurting out during a Monday Night Football viewing session, “Can you show me how to shoot sometime?”
The direct approach worked and he was kind enough to oblige. It was at that moment that I began my journey into the gun world.
Once Phil gave his thumbs up to the used Beretta, which by-the-way was the 12ga. version of the 20ga. Phil first took me skeet shooting with at the local club, I put down my credit card and bought my very first gun.
Today I have a number of guns, including seven shotguns which are all 12ga. I am looking forward to tackling Dove Season 2023 with a 20ga., but I am not yet sure which make and model it will be. It will be coming to me as ‘Test & Evaluation’ sample.
Spoiler alert…it will run great and be an excellent shotgun, but I will absolutely blame all my misses on the shotgun because, as everybody knows, Rule #1 is to always blame the gun and not yourself. I live by that rule.
However, not when it comes to my Beretta 686. I always hear people talking about selling this gun to buy that gun. Or just reducing the number of guns they have overall. Side note…Who are these people and what the hell are they thinking?
I can’t see ever doing that with the over/under Beretta. There is an emotional attachment to that shotgun that runs deep. Together we have crushed a bunch of clay targets out on sporting clays fields in the Mid-Atlantic and Eastern Shore area.
We’ve taken dove out on the Eastern Shore of Maryland when it was my first time both hunting and hunting dove. We did not limit out. We’ve never limited out, but that’s OK.
Over the years I have gently cleaned the gun a number of times, making sure to always leave it with a fine coat of oil along its barrels, because Mid-Atlantic humidity is no joke.
I have invested in extended choke tubes because they make life easier on the clays course when you need to tighten or open your pattern. Plus, they look cool and I can always use the style points.
To me there is no better feeling than pulling the shotgun from its padded sleeve, breaking it open and slinging it over the shoulder as you make your way with a couple boxes of shotshells on your hip to the first sporting clays station.
I dearly love this shotgun and no other shotgun will ever take its place. It was and still is the best $900 I ever spent on a firearm…maybe on anything.
– Paul Erhardt, Managing Editor, the Outdoor Wire Digital Network