Over and Under first shot?

i was always taught to shot the right or under barrel for close stuff and the left barrel or the top for farther shots.

No, there is not a standard. You have to remember which gun you are shooting.

I don't think there is any standard way for the barrel selector to move. But with O/U most fire the bottom barrel 1st since recoil is more straight back making it faster to get back on target for the 2nd shot. Traditionally the right barrel on a SXS is the more open choke and fired 1st. But I think it makes less difference. None really with choke tubes.

Franchi is a different company, no reason for them to be standard. Just because someone bought them out does not mean they change the design. They've probably been doing it that way long before bought by Beretta.

There are only about 3 different choke tube patterns. Many manufacturers share the same ones.

There are more than that. Remington alone has two. So does Browning.That's four there, none interchangable.

There should be red dots, one and two indicating which barrel is which on the selector

Beretta and Benelli have multiple choke patterns too.
I believe Browning has three patterns, Invector, Invector Plus and Invenctor DS.

There is less stress on the action when the bottom barrel is fired. That is why competition guns shoot the bottom barrel first.

There is also (supposedly) less muzzle rise and slightly less felt recoil as the recoil is more inline directly into your shoulder.
Whether anyone can actually TELL the difference remains to be subjective.

The idea sells a lot of "unsingle" barrels to Trap shooters.
Note that the British call the design the "under-over".
I wonder if they have the bottom barrel choked more for the first shot on driven game. Of course a real sport has a pair, fire two shots at incoming pheasants, swap guns with your valet, and fire two shots at the departing birds.

One of our family cars has the gas cap on the right/passenger side, one has it on the left/driver side. If car manufacturers don't standardize that, why in the world would competing shotgun makers standardize which direction the selector switch moves to go over or under first? I can't see that there's any clear ergonomic advantage to one or the other, nor is there any particular logical reason that left would mean up and right mean down (or vice versa).

If you guys can remember to switch to top barrel or bottom barrel, and which way to move the selector, when a grouse or pheasant explodes up out of the grass at your feet, more power to you. I'm lucky if I can remember to take the dang safety off.

ATLDave said:

One of our family cars has the gas cap on the right/passenger side, one has it on the left/driver side. If car manufacturers don't standardize that, .

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I was recently told that gas fillers on European cars are on the right because the Wise Old World Designers want it on the side less likely to be sideswiped.
My BMW is that way.
My Toyota's is on the left. Is that because it is American market or because Japan drives on the other side of the road?

My Nissan Z had it on the right. I don't think it's a Euro/non-Euro thing, as all 4 quadrants are occupied.

Picher said:

Thanks for the input. I prefer to have my primary barrel selection to the left side. That happens to show one dot on the selector and it fires the bottom barrel first on the Beretta.

If the selector were left on the right, two dots are shown, so that doesn't tell me much. However, I usually prefer having the upper barrel fire first for road hunting, since I often only fire one shot and it's easier to reload the upper barrel. I'll get over it.

The choke tubes for the two guns are exact thread/ bore/choke duplicates. I don't know if that's still the case with new guns, but the 29 year old Beretta and 10 year-old Franchi are the same.

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Then it almost certainly takes Beretta/Benelli Mobile chokes.

I keep my “near” choke on in the direction of my trigger hand and push away the selector for further shots with might tighter choke. If they come from behind I am already set for “up close” and if I see them coming towards me I have time to select a better distant pattern.

If I only owned one or they had a standard I might do things differently but with the above system I don’t have to think.

In my family we've had both Fords and Chevys and you guessed it - the filler is on a different side on each vehicle.... go figure...

lemaymiami said:

In my family we've had both Fords and Chevys and you guessed it - the filler is on a different side on each vehicle.... go figure...

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If they have distributors they are also at opposite ends of the engine, on different sides of the camshaft and rotate in different directions (clockwise Chevy, counter clockwise Ford). The cylinders are numbered completely different (1234/5678 Ford, 2468, 1357 Chevy), one has the passenger side connecting rod towards the front the other, the drivers side, oil pumps at opposite ends, etc; however, if you sit down and draw it out on paper the cylinders on the “15426378” Fords, fire the same cylinder sequence to the “18436572” Chevy engines...,go figure...I have too much time on my hands.

But similar to the selector always going away from my hand for the tighter choke, I don’t have to remember both firing orders and numbering systems (aka how people call the same things different) as they are the same relative to me.

Expecting car manufacturers to standardize anything is a pipe dream, I guess it's the same in the gun industry. Having worked on both for a number of years the stupidity of some of engineers is truly mind boggling, especially in the automotive world.