[fabsroman]

6.5's,

I don't care how well you take care of a gun, it will still wear out if you shoot it enough. Regardless of wether it is a Browning, Benelli, Beretta, Krieghoff, or whatever. After I had problems with my Citori, a friend of mine decided to buy a Browning BT-99 trap gun and he wore that thing out in a couple of years. Granted, he doesn't take good care of his guns. The last time I shot with him, his Perazzi was almost completely black and he was just spraying it down with brake cleaner and wiping it off to clean it. However, he swears by that gun and has been shooting it for more years than he shot the Browning BT-99. My uncle has a cousin in Italy that hunts in the rain with a Benelli auto, throws it in the closet afterward without cleaning it, and he continues to swear by the gun, not at it, like I do with the Citori. If I shot the Citori even in the dry and threw it in the closet, the barrels would have so much rust inside them it wouldn't be funny. Sometimes, the barrels on the Citori rust just because there is moisture in the air and I have 3 pretty decent dessicants (sp.) in the safe. Another friend bought one of Brownings GTI sporting clays guns and threw it in the case after shooting. The next morning I thought he was either going to start crying or drop dead when he saw rust all over the exterior. I have hunted with my Benelli SBE in the rain, snow, mud, and whatever else Mother Nature has thrown my way, usually I try to clean it as soon as I get home, but that doesn't always happen. I've been hunting with this gun like this for 8 seasons and the only rust it has on it is 2 small specks that are hardly visible once I take some Hoppes to it. My beef with Browning is more with their customer service department, but that stems from 10+ years ago. Maybe they are better now, but I live by "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." I just hate feeling shameful or shammed.

I have had an issue with some of the nickel plating coming off of a Beretta 682 GoldE, but Beretta replaced the entire gun since it was a manufacturing defect and I had another issue with the finish coming off my 391 Teknys and Beretta replaced the entire stock with some really nice wood. It probably helped that I had 7 Berettas in the safe.

As far as thousands of rounds are concerned, I think almost every shotgun I own, with the exception of my 391 Teknys 20 ga and my 20 ga. youth model, has thousands and thousands of rounds through them. A couple of years ago, I wouldn't go to the clays range with less than 10 boxes of shells and I usually wouldn't leave until I burned them all up, and I was going about twice a week. Over the last year, with work, the remodel and the wedding, I didn't have as much time, but that is starting to change. All of my guns are still tight, granted not so tight that I stuggle to open them, but tight enough that I do not worry about replacing them any time soon. Like you, I have not has a single thing break on any of my guns either. Knock on wood. Something tells me that Skeet might have broken a couple of firing pins over his lifetime with the amount of rounds he shoots. I thought I was nit picky (would have used another word but this is a family site), but the man actually keeps track of the number of rounds he shoots every year and it is a lot.

I also agree about the Krieghoffs. If I was wealthy like you guys, I would have one or two, maybe even three of them, but I'll have to wait to win the lottery.