[sm]

http://www.savagearms.com/stevens/steven411.htm

I get a call from a buddy inquiring about this gun. All I know is what I read from the July Shooting Industry Ad. I suspected it was imported, and sure enough the web site confirms imported from Russia.

He appreciates the 311 and many he has run accross are shot loose, his thinking was this might be a viable alternative. Anybody seen, hefted, shot or know anything? A Bakali (sp?) maybe which I have shot, but under Steven name? He was wanting a fun 28 ga...this 411 only comes in 12 or 20.

Dunno, but I suggested for a 28 to find a used 1100, 870...or pony up for a O/U...it's not like this guy is short of green.

Just curious, I guess we all want champagne for beer prices it seems.

Mike Irwin, anyone?

thanks

[Detritus]

i was hoping maybe they'd be "american asembled, of foreign parts" (like many cars today), or from a decent shotgun maker OTHER THAN Baikal.

if it's a "baikal" (aka EAA, a few other trade names have been used, as well) you're better off getting a Stoger "uplander". now i will admit that the stoeger guns are rough as well, but it takes alot less money to get a stoeger "smooth

assuming that these are made by the same people, unless there is some SERIOUS shop work being done by Savage when the guns arrive from Russia. the guns will be built like a tank but quite frankly "rougher than the insides of a GI potato peeler"
they're fairly good guns, but i know dern well that human nature will take over and shops will try to sell these guns as a "american SxS" and want more for them than the semi-identical EAA (again assuming the guns ARE Baikal made) right next to it in the rack. and to tell the truth i personally would be hard pressed to pay the price asked for the EAA guns right now, i'd want another $75-125 (estimate to make a EAA "run right" from a knowlegible smith) knocked off for the work i'd have to have done to it to make it more than just "livable"


i truly hoped that maybe, JUST MAYBE, someone would make a competitor gun to the baikal and Stoeger (esp now that Berretta has decided that only Bennelli "stocking dealers" will get stoegers without having to go through a dealer who IS one)

or maybe my time being around Cowboy Action shooters, has biased me against the Baikals, (EAA bounty hunters and the Stoeger "coach gun" being the most common SxS SGs on the line, b/c most don't like to put a REAL 311 through the abuse that is CAS) but i see what has to be done to them to get them slicked up to what is to me a "usable condition" (ie a trip to a gunsmith 8 times out of 10) versus what it takes to put a stoeger in the same condition, (a can of valve grinding compound or J&B bore compound, two snap caps, and a couple hours sitting in front of the TV cycling the action and dryfiring [thus the snapcaps], )

either way if Savage is getting the guns from Baikal (who made the first Makarovs in 1949, BTW, and the Russian olympic team's pistols) i personally won't be buying. even though i have a good deal of respect for the OTHER guns they've produced and continue to produce and may one day buy one of those other models, the SXS shotguns they ship to the US market, could be greatly improved.

[Mike Irwin]

Sorry, absolutely no experience with the 411