Dave McCracken
Moderator In Memoriam
Out of the blue, Beretta contacted me a while back and asked me to conduct "a fair and impartial" test of their new waterfowler, the A400 Xtreme Unico. It's,according to their flack sheet, capable of functioning with 7/8 oz, 2 3/4" loads up to 2 oz, 3.5" Howitzer shells.
I picked it up yesterday at PGC, my home range and FFL. Packed with all the accessories in a typical hard plastic case, it took a few minutes to assemble, and after a glance at the manual, off to the firing line hurried I.
The manual said it was best to break it in with mid level loads, 2 3/4", 1 1/8 oz ones. Rather than fling my 7/8 oz reloaded hulls around in the mud, I bought a case of the Federal "Pinks" to use for the breakin.
First a round of wobble and then a round of sporting, both in the company of two guys named Chris. Met by chance, we struck it off and moved from one venue to the other.
I didn't shoot the new gun well. It balances way different from what I have been shooting and runs a good pound less. Like the last 20 or so shotguns before it, I'll adapt to it fairly soon.
There were stoppages. These decreased as the round count went up, and since I didn't clean off any preservative nor squirt any lube first, I kinda expected them.
100 rounds later, I went home happy despite the poor scores and reliability.
Today saw me back there getting an employee to show me how to clean and lube the gas system. I then had a trap locked down to only throw straightaways and stood at Post 3 in my goose parka. Starting from Low Gun, I shot and noted the breaks. No left/right bias was evident, but I could tell it was shooting a bit high.Hits were mostly solid.
Moving down to range 4, I shot a fast round of wobble. Scores for both rounds were in the low 20s. Had just one failure to feed, the clean and lube definitely improved things.
On the way into work, I stopped at Gunz R Us and picked up a box of 3.5" goose loads, Federal Black Cloud. Some sticker shock there.Since I have never owned a 3.5" shotgun, feeding this one's gargantuan appetite required shelling out (pun intended) some cash and getting some ammo I've been getting along without so far.
That's right, I've never fired off a 3.5" shell.
Yet.
More later....
I picked it up yesterday at PGC, my home range and FFL. Packed with all the accessories in a typical hard plastic case, it took a few minutes to assemble, and after a glance at the manual, off to the firing line hurried I.
The manual said it was best to break it in with mid level loads, 2 3/4", 1 1/8 oz ones. Rather than fling my 7/8 oz reloaded hulls around in the mud, I bought a case of the Federal "Pinks" to use for the breakin.
First a round of wobble and then a round of sporting, both in the company of two guys named Chris. Met by chance, we struck it off and moved from one venue to the other.
I didn't shoot the new gun well. It balances way different from what I have been shooting and runs a good pound less. Like the last 20 or so shotguns before it, I'll adapt to it fairly soon.
There were stoppages. These decreased as the round count went up, and since I didn't clean off any preservative nor squirt any lube first, I kinda expected them.
100 rounds later, I went home happy despite the poor scores and reliability.
Today saw me back there getting an employee to show me how to clean and lube the gas system. I then had a trap locked down to only throw straightaways and stood at Post 3 in my goose parka. Starting from Low Gun, I shot and noted the breaks. No left/right bias was evident, but I could tell it was shooting a bit high.Hits were mostly solid.
Moving down to range 4, I shot a fast round of wobble. Scores for both rounds were in the low 20s. Had just one failure to feed, the clean and lube definitely improved things.
On the way into work, I stopped at Gunz R Us and picked up a box of 3.5" goose loads, Federal Black Cloud. Some sticker shock there.Since I have never owned a 3.5" shotgun, feeding this one's gargantuan appetite required shelling out (pun intended) some cash and getting some ammo I've been getting along without so far.
That's right, I've never fired off a 3.5" shell.
Yet.
More later....