Field & Stream - The 10 Best Shotguns ever made!(?)

PeakXV

PeakXV

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Here are the top 10 in Field & Stream's Best(?) 50 Shotguns:

1. The Platonic Ideal - Purdey Side-by-Side Game Gun (Produced: 1880--present)

Established in 1814, James Purdey and Sons of London builds one grade of double, "best," which costs as much as a small house. The Purdey doesn't earn the top spot because it's expensive; it's here because it epitomizes the British game gun, which represents the Platonic ideal of a shotgun. Start with wood and steel and cut away everything that's not a gun, and you're left with a game gun. Slim, light, ergonomically perfect and fitted to the owner, it comes as close as any firearm can to becoming part of the shooter. Given $100,000 to spend on a house or a gun, I'll take ..... read more



2. The Desert Island Gun - Remington 870 (Produced: 1950--present)
3. The Aristocrat - Browning Superposed(Produced: 1931--1986)
4. The Sistine Chapel - Famars (Produced: 1967--present)
5. The Soft Shooter - Remington 1100 (Produced: 1963--present)
6.The Humpback of Morgan, Utah - Browning A-5 (Produced by Browning: 1903--1998. Produced as the Remington Model 11: 1905--1949)
7.The Machine Age Marvel - Winchester Model 12 (Produced: 1912--1980)
8.The Dove Machine - Beretta AL390 (Produced: 1992--1999. Reintroduced as the 3901: 2002--present)
9.The Birmingham Box - Westley Richards & Co. Droplock (Produced: 1875--present)
10.The Icon - Parker (Produced: 1866--1934 By Remington: 1934--1942)
 
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Well ...... I inherited #3. "The Aristocrat" and it lives up to it's billing, & #2 is well within my grasp, however #1 might take a bit of Friday Night Super 7 luck to acquire.;)
 
In typical Field & Stream fashion, they confuse the unique Westley Richards droplock for a boxlock. They then rate it behind machine made guns such as the Remington 1100 and 870, in a "10 best" list that starts with Purdey? These guys get paid way too much to write this stuff.

Sharptail
 
Sharptail said:
In typical Field & Stream fashion, they confuse the unique Westley Richards droplock for a boxlock. They then rate it behind machine made guns such as the Remington 1100 and 870, in a "10 best" list that starts with Purdey? These guys get paid way too much to write this stuff.

Sharptail
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X2. Any of these "Best Of" lists are just lazy journalism and often say more about what the author doesn't know. I went through the entire list and trying to name 50 clearly stretched the writer's knowledge. For example, the Browning Citori and Daley/Miroku are the same gun, made in the same factory with different finishing.

Perhaps because they are hunting oriented they appear to have passed on clay target guns such as Krieghoff and Ljutic. Also, any list of the "Best" that doesn't include Fabbri and McKay Brown isn't worth the paper it's written on.
 
As long as their "feature teasers" allow them to meet their quota in monthly magazine sales to the "Bubba & Skeeters" of the outdoor world .... then they probably don't really care what "Bob & Doug" up in Canada think about their somewhat (in this case) randomly sequenced selections.;)
 
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I own five of those ten,and they didn't even mention the Mod 37 which is oe of the best pumps ever made!

So much for Experts! EX is an uknown factor and a Spurt is a drip under pressure!

Bob:)
 
Hey cool, 3 Brownings made the top ten, that man was a genius, he was also credited for winning WWI

The Suuperposed, A-5 and Winchester Model -12 were all his, not to mention the 1911, BAR etc... din't he have something to do with the Winchester Mod-94 as well?
 
bill c68 said:
Hey cool, 3 Brownings made the top ten, that man was a genius, he was also credited for winning WWI

The Suuperposed, A-5 and Winchester Model -12 were all his, not to mention the 1911, BAR etc... din't he have something to do with the Winchester Mod-94 as well?
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The Winchester Model 12 wasn't a Browning design the 1897 was. While he did have a hand in developing various Winchester lever actions the principles of lever actions and pump action firearms were established well before Browning. He advanced the science but they weren't particularly ground breaking.

Where Browning was truly a genius was in the development of gas-operated actions and the toggle link barrel used in large caliber semi-automatic pistols.

In shotguns the Auto 5 was state of the art at the time however the Superposed really wasn't. The sliding forend design was new but the rest of the gun was developed based on other designs. Shotgunners using over/unders and sxs today owe a lot more to Anson and Deeley than they do to John Browning.

Browning deserves his due but the near worship of the man becomes a bit excessive at times. As for him winning WWI his designs were comparatively late to the party. In 1885, when John Browning was still making single-shot rifles at Winchester, Hiram Maxim was presenting his belt-fed machine gun to the British Army Board. It was Maxim, not Browning, who pioneered using a gun's recoil to operate and was the person who developed the belt-fed machine gun.
 
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:D
 
bill c68 said:
You are right... just looked up, but apprently the design was based on the 1897 so I was somewhat right:D Browning did sell the model 12 at some point.
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Browning had some Model 12s made up by Miroku many years after Winchester ceased production.
 
Actually DR Gautling made it hot,then Hiram Maximus got real ,and John Bowning used a radiator to cool the action.

Maxim actually realized what he had invented and prayed to god to forgive him for what he released upon his fellow man!

To late !

bob:)
 
Hey! I think that "list" of yours is flawed because I don't see either of my Winchester 1300 Defender OR my New England Firearms 'Pardner' up there...

...maybe you typed it wrong or something...
 
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