Side by side or over and under?

vibez

Hi everyone,

Im looking at buyin a new shot gun.

Ive been using my fathers for years his is semi auto-matic, and i think its time to fly the coupe!

im probably gona use it for crows,pigeons and clays.

i know side by sides are older but ive been told if i got a good one theres no need to bother with and over and under (under and over??)

anyway?

any suggestions?? my budget about €500

cheers in advance

PS - anyone know of a place to shoot clays in meath/dublin area?

Chopperdog

Vibez,

Alot of questions there to be answered.
Where an over and under is no disadvantage to shooting live quarry, the side by side is by no means suited to clays.
By their nature the side by side is generally a lighter gun designed for easy carry over the fields, the downside of this is that there is a noticly greater percieved recoil transferred to the shooter as a result of the lightweight nature of the gun.
Unless you have very small hands, you will have to use a half pinched (posh old lady holding teacup) grip on the fore-end to avoid your fingers looping over the rib and obstructing you line of sight along the barrel, none of which are condusive to good gun control or good shooting.
It is very unusual to find a S/S with the mod cons that most o/u's have i.e. selective trigger, ejectors and multi choke.
By all means the most advantagous gun of the two is the o/u.
To answer your other question regarding where to shoot clays near you try,
www.courtlough.com. They are based in Balbriggan.
P.M. me if you want an introduction or I can organise for you to try an o/u and s/s there to make up your own mind.
Good luck with your choice, but truly it has to be the over & under.

Vegeta

Chopperdog wrote:

It is very unusual to find a S/S with the mod cons that most o/u's have i.e. selective trigger, ejectors and multi choke .

I have a beautiful Fabarm S/S with selective trigger, ejectors and multichoke. Was thinking of changing it for a beretta xtremea(sp?) semi auto though as my brother has one and its class

Chopperdog

Vegeta wrote:

I have a beautiful Fabarm S/S with selective trigger, ejectors and multichoke. Was thinking of changing it for a beretta xtremea(sp?) semi auto though as my brother has one and its class

As I said, It is unusual, not impossible.
At that stage you are getting into the more 'select' grade of s/s and are definitely getting out of the budget range of the OP yet he may still get an o/u in this price bracket with these extras.
In all fairness, s/s's with these extra trimmings are not at all common unless you are going into the 'quality' gun sphere with their respective higher prices.

Good choice on the Extrema, yet have you considered a Benelli?
I traded from an extrema to a benelli M1 super 90 and have never looked back. Check them out if you get a chance.

Vegeta

oh i agree my S/S was well over the 500 euro mark, if I was to give advice, i'd say look for a single trigger over and under and multi choke if possible, not essential though.

My brother had a Benelli (i never remember the spelling of this) super black eagle and it was a fantastic gun, the Beretta is a lot easier to use of course this all depends on my budget after all i have just bought the tikka .223

vibez

Thanks for the tips lads,

i think i will start looking in the local gun shop for a o/u

@ chopperdog thanks for that mate. I have heard about balbriggan my dad is mad to head over, il check it out get back to u.

Thanks again lads

E@gle.

for E500 ya wont get a new o/u but you can get a 2nd hand gun.
stay away from makes like lanber as they are not able for clay shooting.
try and get a nice 2nd hand beretta or browning although they hard to get at that price but you can get some really nice 2nd hand guns out there.

macnas

In Side by Side, I'd love a Beretta Silver Hawk in 20 bore for walked up stuff........ oh if any of you folk ever come across Browning Auto 5 Light 20 in fairly good nick, let me know.

Degsy

If i can highjack this thread for a minute..i'm still looking for a cheap double for pigeon shooting.
D

civdef

It always seemed to me that there are good side-by-sides, and cheap ones, and very little overlap between the two categories.

There are a lot of old dubious secondhand Spanish SBS shotguns out there for small money (Larranaga and the like), but I wouldn't be in a hurry to shoot them. There are also the Baikals, which are decent inexpensive guns but clunky - great farmer's guns.

Zabala make fairly nice side-by-sides of which some should be knocking around secondhand, and there are lots of decent Turkish shotguns coming in these days, without excessive price tags.

Terrier

civdef wrote:

I There are also the Baikals, which are decent inexpensive guns but clunky - great farmer's guns..

I have a Baikal O/U, Multi Choke, Ejectors, Selective trigger.
Serving me very well, i've used it for everything!! Beside being a heavy gun, which I find easier to use in the field anyway!!

It was my first gun and I could not have started off with anything better for the price!

P.S. I'm no farmer

civdef

Yeah, Baikal O/Us have come on a lot in recent years, but I was talkin about side-by-sides.

Chopperdog

E@gle. wrote:

for E500 ya wont get a new o/u but you can get a 2nd hand gun.
stay away from makes like lanber as they are not able for clay shooting.

Absolutely nothing wrong with Lanbers for clay shooting, Try telling that above comment to Chris Adams, the most up and coming Irish Clay shooter who won everything in front of him last year with a lanber !

I would even go totally against you in that I believe Lanber are producing one of the best value:quality ratio guns on the Irish market at present and where I shoot, this is reflected in the amount of people shooting them and the high resale/trade-in value that they are holding.
Okay, they are not quite a Beretta or Browning yet they are streets above your Baikals and Yildiz and the likes and are actually a nice gun to shoot with.
This is fair praise from me as I would be self confessed shotgun snob!:p

E@gle.

Chopperdog wrote:

Absolutely nothing wrong with Lanbers for clay shooting, Try telling that above comment to Chris Adams, the most up and coming Irish Clay shooter who won everything in front of him last year with a lanber !

i had a lanber for maybe a year and towards the end of the year i done a lot of clay shooting with it and the whole gun fecked up on me. Maybe mine was a low budget one though got it for E400. not bad for my 1st gun. excellent gun for game shooting but not for the clays.

spideog7

I have a lanber O/U, beautiful gun, I love it ....first one I ever had....used to be the fathers gun so tis about 20 yrs old I'd say. Must be over 10,000 shots gone through it and lots of BB's too....replaced the lower firing pin and the spring on the safety this year and she's going like a bomb (excuse the pun )
Other than that I only ever used the brothers Remington 870, sweet repeater...couldn't get my head around it at all though couldn't hit a thing with it ....just a matter of gettin' used of it I suppose

civdef

If you are going to be doing a lot of clayshooting, you need a gun designed for the job. Lanber makes those, but they are more expensive than the basic game model.

A few rounds at a flapper shoot now and again won't do any harm, but regular clayshooting with a game gun is hard on the gun (and the shooter!).

Double Barrel

Vibez,

Looking for a good used double can be an interesting learning experience. One needs to be wary. Any time you encounter a double you might wish to buy give it a good going over. Ask the owner to disassemble it. Hold the barrels by the lumps, the projections below the barrel at the breech end and then flick both barrels with a finger. They should ring like a church bell. If they sound like a dull thump, something is loose, and you are asking for trouble. Thank the owner and MOVE on. If they ring nicely, attach the barrels to the action, then holding the barrels lightly bump the stock with your fist, do they feel loose, do they vibrate in your hand?

Wiggle the action while holding the barrels, is there any side-to-side or up and down play? Reverse your hold and do the same while holding the stock. If everything seems tight, then run your hands carefully along both barrels, you are feeling for any dents or bulges. Sometimes feeling a pair of barrels is even more revealing than looking through and at them.

Finally, remove that barrels from the action and look carefully at the proof marks, usually on the watertable, and somewhere there should be reflected the length of the chambers. Older British-made guns will be marked in inches, but more recently proofed shotguns and continental guns will be in millimeters. Those marked 50-mm have 2-inch chambers, 65-mm 2 1/2-inch and 70-mm is the standard 2 3/4-inch and 75/76-mm 3-inch. Most who deal in double guns will have chamber-length gauges, a barrel thickness gauge and a bore micrometer, and should willingly use them to verify the gun's chokes, barrels and chamber lengths. And do not assume a gun is automatically chambered for 2 3/4-inch shells. There are numerous 12s around chambered for 2 5/8-inch ammo, likewise the 16 bore and some 20 gauge's chambered for 1 1/2-inch cartridges.

Take your time and ask questions.

vibez

and thanks double barrell

........... will take all that with me, although im probably gona buy the gun 2nd hand but it will be a trade in down d local gun shop there sound fellas so i wud say any problems they will sort it.

although thanks 4 the gud avice !