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Purchased a BR-99 CL1 and have had it out to the range three times now. Most of my shotgun shooting is club level three gun shooting steel targets or static clay pigeons. Up until know most of my shotgun shooting has been with Remington 870 pump shotguns. Currently I am using a 870 Tactical. Hoping to use this shotgun in future club matches.
It came with two five round magazines and three chokes (IM, M, IC). It semi-automatic with a 20" barrel. It has AR style controls (safety, magazine release and bolt catch). The cocking handle is in the right side of the receiver. It came with a rubber cap over the cocking handle. It was useless and fell off immediately. I am not sure if it was only to prevent the cocking handle from piercing the box or was to address complaints that the cocking handle is too small and sharp. It has an A2 style carrying handle with an adjustable rear sight. The rear sight has a round peep sight and a U notch sight. It has a polymer A2 style front sight. There is a full length picatinny rail on the receiver and front hand guard and a short rail on the bottom of the hand guard.
The shotgun does feel as cheap as I expected and actually feels quite durable. The rear sight and carrying handle is functional but is plastic and feels cheap. The shotgun feels slightly front heavy. Of course when loaded the weight of the ammunition doesn't make it feel even more front heavy like tube fed shotguns. The butt is hollow and I have read online that the butt can be filled with a bag of sand to balance it out. I don't think it's a big enough issue so I won't be doing this.
The threading on the chokes is very fine and as far as I know they are not interchangeable with other makes. I find they are a little hard to get the started when threading them in. I am a little concerned about the possibility of cross threading them.
The first day on the range I put 63 rounds of mixed ammunition thought it. I had read that you need to put 100 heavy loads through it to get it running properly. I didn't have that much and most of my ammo was 2 3/4 inch not 3 inch. It ran flawlessly with the 3" shot, 2 3/4" buckshot and 2 3/4" rifled slugs.
I tried Federal 2 3/4" Target Load 7.5 shot. Rounds 6 to 10 fired and partially cycled the action and ended up with the fired shot she'll in the chamber with the bolt closed. Rounds 59 to 63 fired and partially ejected and ended up with the empty shot shell stove piped in the chamber.
The second time out I put 20 rounds of 2 3/4" buckshot through it. Functioned flawlessly. Tired some Winchester Super Target 2 3/4" 8 shot and it jammed the shotgun. I had bought a flat of this ammo and it jams my 870 as well. I have since donated all of this Winchester ammo to club members that have double barrelled shotguns and I won't be purchasing Winchester again.
I ordered two extra 5 round magazines which cost $52.99 + tax each. I remove the rear sight and carrying handle with a Vortex Strikefire II red dot sight. Went out yesterday and sighted the red dot in with 14 rounds of Score rifled slugs. Functioned flawlessly and hitting A zone on a IPSC target at 50 yards is no problem with fairly fast follow ups for the second shot. To test my spare magazines I fired 20 rounds of Kent 3" No. 4 shot as fast as I can change magazines. That was a blast and all 20 rounds functioned without issue.
The Pros
- AR style controls
- reliability is excellent with heavier 2 3/4" loads and anything 3" that I have tried so far
- the cyclic rate seems really fast (I have limited semi auto experience to compare it to)
- field stripping is straight forward
- when loading a magazine with the bolt locked open the bolt release functioned perfectly and loaded the first round every time, no need to use the cocking handle
The Cons
- magazines do not drop free and must be pulled from the magazine well
- so far it does not function reliably with Federal 2 3/4" Target Loads (my standard 3 gun ammo)
- the bolt release sticks out quite far when it is engaged, if you place the shotgun down on a table to hard or pump it after it is placed down the bolt release can function closing the bolt. This could be a problem in stages where the shotgun needs to be abandoned with the bolt open. I have a couple of ideas to fix this.
- 5 round magazines - nothing can be done about this but I would love to run a 20 or 25 round magazine through it just to see how fast a mag dump could be done.
