I have a particular Franchi semi-auto shotgun I acquired several years ago which I believe is their standard model. I have long since giving up doing any shotgun hunting, so therefore never had occasion to even take it out to try firing it. However, just yesterday I participated in a European style pheasant hunt so I decided to use the Franchi. I must say the hunt went well and the the gun performed without any problems. Never having had a semi-auto before I was curious about one thing in particular about this gun. I tried loading up the magazine first, and then cycling a round into the chamber. It wouldn't pick up the round. So after I manually loaded the first round into the chamber and fired, everything functioned fine. No probems. Now if you ejected a round manually (to change stations with your chamber open) it woud eject the round and then stay open. In other words when you would fire a round, everything functions normally, but if you manually rack the action, it ejects the round in the chamber and doesn't pick up the next round out of the magazine. Does this seem normal ? So if you have rounds in the magzine, how would you get them out? Is there such a thing as a trigger activated release which would allow the next round in the magazine to spring into position? Thankfully I figured out all of this before going hunting yeserday, but honestly I still have rounds in my magazine that need to be removed.