Best goose gun?

Beaver53 said:
My wife wants a new goose gun, her Weatherby 20 gauge pump just doesn't have the range. She wants a 12 gauge semi-auto, what's a good dependable goose gun for her?
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A 12 gauge has no more range than a 20 gauge. It has more pellets, just like a 3 1/2-inch "magnum" shotshell is not a high altitude anti aircraft gun on birds, it just has more pellets than a 3-inch shell.
 
Waterfowler said:
A 12 isn't gonna specifically give more range, only more pellets in the load.
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Agree 100 percent. I guided waterfowling for many years and annualy the number of geese harvested was over 5000. A properly fitting gun thats comfortable to shoot will harvest more birds than a bigger gun that pounds the shooter. I used a 10 guage but only to dispatch crippled birds. When I hunt birds my go too is my 20 and ive even used a 28 guage on geese more than once. Head on the stock,swing, follow thru and stuff will fall. Bigger is not always better.Just my opinion
 
The key is learning how to shoot and shooting a gun that fits. I shoot as many geese now with a 20ga as I did years ago with any of the 12 and 10 gauges I owned and shot. Learning range, lead, follow through and shooting good combinations of choke and load will fold birds. Invest in lots of off season practice on a skeet or sporting clays course and she'll find her 20 is plenty for geese. My wife shoots a Beretta A400 Xplor 20 gauge. I got her into trap and then skeet to teach her how to lead, follow through to center birds in the pattern, learn leads at various angles and took her to a NSCA Level 2 Instructor to have her gun measured and adjusted to fit her and some professional instruction. It was well worth it. If you can't centre a bird in the pattern it won't matter a hill of beans the size of gun and payload.
 
Beretta hands down! I personally own 4 beretta autoloaders , a few with very high round counts and have had ZERO issues with them. They are soft shooting, fast cycling machines.
Beretta xtremea
Beretta xtrema 2
Beretta A400 Xtreme Unico
Beretta A400 Xplor - 20 gauge
 
B-guns for me. Currently shooting Browning Silver (been my main for 15 years or so) and a Benelli Supernova (the Comfortech stock takes some of the bite out of the recoil).

Browning Silver or Maxus II, or Beretta A3xx/A400 for reliable, well-supported, gas-operated field guns. There are a lot of other choices but it's hard to go wrong with a B-gun.
 
Beaver53 said:
My wife wants a new goose gun, her Weatherby 20 gauge pump just doesn't have the range. She wants a 12 gauge semi-auto, what's a good dependable goose gun for her?
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Start feeding her 20 Bismuth shells and she will see a significant improvement.

If she is a smaller-framed person then you will want to be very careful about gun fit. A 12 gauge semi can be a heavy and unwieldly device. Some time on the clay range with a variety of guns will be time well spent.
 
BigUglyMan said:
Start feeding her 20 Bismuth shells and she will see a significant improvement.

If she is a smaller-framed person then you will want to be very careful about gun fit. A 12 gauge semi can be a heavy and unwieldly device. Some time on the clay range with a variety of guns will be time well spent.
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That's something I have to look into for reloads for my AYA SxS 3 1/2" ten guage.
 
My wife outshot me on the first three flocks knocking down 7 dark geese to my 5 but then I made a strong comeback knocking down a triple while she missed two shots at the same flock and coming up empty handed. We finished one bird shy of our 8 bird limit each.
She was shooting her A400 20ga with a cylinder bore choke and Herter's 3" 7/8oz #2 steel loads and I was shooting my SX3 with IC choke and the same ammo in #4 shot. All our shooting was birds settling crosswind to us on the outside edge of the decoy spread and all but one bird folded dead. The other my wife hit hard but it continued to fly then about 200 yards before suddenly dropping dead from the sky. The outside of the spread was 32 yards from the blind so most shots were take at around 35 yards.
 
leveractionjunkie;[URL="tel:18408366" said:
18408366[/URL]]Impressive performance from 7/8oz of steel! Well done, good shooting. They must pattern well I bet.
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Yes they pattern nicely and as I said in an earlier post. You can shoot the heaviest payload available but if you can't centre it on target it will not do you an ounce(no pun intended) of good. You need a gun that fits properly and you need to practice shooting and learn to judge distance and leads.
 
the spank said:
Yes they pattern nicely and as I said in an earlier post. You can shoot the heaviest payload available but if you can't centre it on target it will not do you an ounce(no pun intended) of good. You need a gun that fits properly and you need to practice shooting and learn to judge distance and leads.
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And that is the key, although many people overlook this, and are only concerned with throwing as much shot as they can.
 
stubblejumper said:
And that is the key, although many people overlook this, and are only concerned with throwing as much shot as they can.
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I’d like to get properly fitted by someone knowledgeable.

I’ve made a patterning board and adjusted a couple of guns to center my patterns etc but would really like to do the whole process properly. I fully agree that it doesn’t matter how much shot you’re sending if it’s not going where you’re pointing
 
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