Super Black Eagle II

[skeet]

Well as I stated in the waterfowl thread I got ahold of a SBEII the other day. Finally took it out shooting yesterday. Just went to the skeet range and tried the thing every way I could there. Only ran a few heavy loads through it. The rest were 1 and 1 1/8 oz target loads.

The particulars on the gun....SBEII in Black(?) with 28 in bbl. This gun is LIGHT(7 lb 7 oz). Seems to be too light for a goose and duck gun. But we'll see about that next month when the goose season comes in. The gun is muzzle light and easy to swing..even on the long crossing shots. I tried some 45-50 yd crossers with the target 7 1/2's. When I did my job they broke nicely..I was using a mod choke at that range and you could crush 'em...so I feel the crio chokes this thing is equipped with are somewhat tight. The gun comes with a couple of stock spacers that I think I will have to use as the gun shoots a little high(for me, as I shoot with my head pretty erect).Surprisingly the gun shot everything we put through it from 1 oz to a few 1 5/8 oz 3 1/2 inchers(steel). Now those bad boys will wake you up when you shoot them...in a short sleeve T shirt. When hunting, the recoil should be pretty manageable with this high tech stock. The 1 oz 's were pussycats in this gun and functioned just fine when the gun was firmly on the shoulder. There were a few(6 or 7) failures to feed (1 oz loads only)when the gun wasn't held on the shoulder firmly...but that was my fault and my friends fault who had more failures than I did. All in all this is a nice shooting gun... My dislikes are very few.. I don't really like the slight hump at the back of the receiver but that is a(personal) cosmetic thing. If you are shooting it right you'll never see the gun anyway. I also wish the gun were a bit heavier as a waterfowl gun is usually not carried too far so weight really doesn't matter too much.... unless you are jump shooting. I'm also not too fond of plastic and aluminum on a gun but must admit the plastic stocks are definitely better for a waterfowl gun. I have a Beretta 3 1/2 inch gun also and it is plastic stocked as is my 11-87 waterfowl gun. Practical if not pretty. The gun comes with a forend cap and stock ready for QD sling swivels. The gun also is a real whizzer to keep clean. Not too many things to go wrong..no gas pistons or cleaning of the mag tube to get rid of accumulated powder fouling. It seems to be a very reliable functioning shotgun. Going to try it out on ducks this week and will let you all know how it works. Will try to take and post a picture tomorrow also. Any questions please email or post a reply. There is also one other thing that I don't really like about this gun...The price!! This thing should not cost any more than a Rem 11-87. In fact I don't know why people spend this much for a field gun. Well I guess I did but I got this thing for a really great price compared to retail...and a free case of shells to boot.

All in all a good shooting gun and will continue the test through the waterfowl season here this year. Then I will make the complete report known to y'all:D

[tjwatty]

I have been shooting my SBEII now for a couple of weeks and have had very few complaints. The only thing I found was my magazine tube seemed to have a catch in it when loading multiple shells. I took it apart and sanded what I percieved to be the rough spot and replaced, lubing well, also my forearm is very tight to get off, you have to give it quite a jerk. I have had no further problems. I do think for what I paid that even this minor glitch should have been found at the factory.
The light weight takes some getting used to, found it to be a little "whippy" at skeet and I do have a hard time with trap in the wind. I have been shooting a heavy trap and skeet gun so some adjustment time probably would help. At sporting clays I was shooting low gun and found it quite fast to the bird and a lot of fun to shoot. I did find that the chokes were a little tighter than expected and dropped to Improved Mod for trap and IC for clays. Even from the 27yd line when I centered them I smoked them. At the pattern board with the full I got an excellent pattern for turkey shooting. (36 pellets at 25yds) I do have a tendency to pull to the right I guess the light weight again. I just wish I had one of these back in the day I was walking all over Gods creation quail and pheasant hunting. My gun always started the day at 8 lbs but finished at about 50.

[tjwatty]

Ok I got a complaint.
I shot 4 rounds of 5 stand yesterday and at the end I noticed that my shadow grass camo, around the muzzle area, was chipped. After closer inspection I found that my finger nail could scrape it right off. Only at the muzzle, so my brilliant mind deducted that the heat from the muzzle took away the sticking power. Smart Huh? Not a big deal but again for approx. $1500 bucks I think at least this stuff should be almost armor proof.
I'm still experimenting with chokes, shot the IC on the 5 stand and missed somw close easy shots but dusted some longer ones, I wish I would have tried the cyl. just for laughs and giggles but I am leaning toward the IC when duck season starts in 11 days and a wake up.

[fabsroman]

TJ,

You should take a picture of the barrel and e-mail it to customer support at Benelli. I am always interested to see what Beretta and Benelli customer support will do. They were pretty good to me last summer.