Requirements for a field gun are very different from those for a dedicated competition gun. A skeet shooter will fire more rounds in a year than most hunters will in a lifetime. For national honors, minimums are (or at least used to be) 1000 registered targets each in 20ga, 28ga, .410 bore and 1200 in 12ga. That's SCORED targets. I was a wannabe - never made minimums for state or nationals teams and I was shooting 10-12k shells a year. One of the Olympic competitors I knew (international skeet is VERY different from American skeet) shot 500 practice targets EVERY WEEK (he had a number of sponsors...).
Running that kind of volume through an inexpensive field gun will reduce it to scrap in a couple of years.
Some of what has been written here is truly laughable. I've been out of NSSA skeet for quite awhile, but when I was most active back in the '90s, the following statements applied:
- Beretta 68x models were a solid entry-level shotgun, dependable and lasted forever. One of the guys I knew started with a used 682 and ran tens of thousands of shells through it. I shot a 687EELL for a few years before moving up to Kolar. But most serious competitive shooters moved up. Not all. But most.
- I had the honor of shooting with and refereeing for several world champions - Mayes, Kirkman, Brown, several others. They all ran Krieghoffs, except Brown, who had a modified Beretta that weight about 15 pounds. Later, about the time I stopped competing, Kolar had made inroads with the top-rung shooters.
- Very, VERY few people used Brownings, mainly because their standard stock configuration (even on clays and skeet models) caused a lot of muzzle flip. I remember one lady competitor dropped out of her first shoot after 100 targets because her Browning Citori Skeet actually bruised her cheekbone to the point it bled (the stock had been modified to fit her). I had the same experience - guns felt great to hold but kicked like a spooked mule.
- A statement was made that a Browning started unlocking under recoil at 20,000 rounds. That seems odd to me... Browning is a shadow of what it was when their A5s were made by Fabrique Nationale in Belgium, but 20k rounds means "barely broken in" to a Kolar, Krieghoff, Beretta. I had ~75k rounds through my Kolar when the hammer springs were replaced (like an oil change). The smith said the firing pins were still good to go (they can get pitted over time by blowby from primers) as were ejector springs.
A couple of people recommended Beretta Silver Pigeon as an over/under field gun. I wouldn't disagree with that. When my wife was shooting, a few of the ladies in her classes bought them in 20-gauge - against instructor recommendation - because they were under-7-pounds-light and looked really nice. But they were
Field Guns, nice to carry, but beat the living shit out of those women in the course of four rounds of skeet... all dumped the guns or sold them for something else.
Same with Benelli. Nice field gun, but unpleasant for high-volume shooting.
All the autoloaders - dominated by Beretta and Remington "in my day" - required a lot of maintenance (compared to O/U guns) and spare parts.
The really cheap guns - Stoeger comes to mind - I've seen them split, gall, or otherwise catastrophically fail in just a few hundred rounds.
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My point is simply that it isn't fair to compare workaday field guns to dedicated competition guns. For a hunting and "shoot for fun with my friends," running a few hundred shells a year, just get what you can afford and fits.
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