Beretta S 57E (20ga)
Kim du Toit
June 13, 2007
5:28 AM CDT
A Reader wrote to a while ago, and made this comment: ”How come you’ve never featured Beretta shotguns in the GGPs before?”
For a moment, I thought he was mistaken, because it seems that I’ve mentioned them several times; but when I went to check the GGP section, I found he was right.
Mea maxima culpa.
If there is a sporting shotgun brand which I could recommend as a slam-dunk, take-it-to-the-bank, never-regret purchase decision, Beretta would be it. No one I know has ever regretted buying one, and several people I know who are absolute dead shots with a shotgun (eg. Mr. Free Market) prefer to use Beretta. Now understand, I’m not running down any of the other fine brands of “premium” (ie. not handmade, but quality-built) shotguns. They’re all good.
But I don’t know if there are any that are appreciably better than Beretta. In fact, I would go out on a limb here and say that to do any better than a Beretta sporting shotgun, you would have to spend much more—in the order of 4x more—to get something that could outshoot a Beretta, last as long as a Beretta, or hold its value like a Beretta. (Indeed, I’m not even sure that any brand, regardless of cost, can outshoot a Beretta.)
Here’s an example of one, the long-since discontinued Model S 57E in 20ga:
This is a shotgun which has been used often, and hard. Yet look closely at this gun, and it’s still as sound as the day it came out the box:
Secondhand, this gun will run you close to $1,500—about the cost of a brand-new Ruger Red Label—and if I had the choice between the two, there would be no choice: the Beretta would win, hands down.
They are fine, quality shotguns, well worthy of the Beretta tradition, and you will never be in bad company with one.
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