Semi-Automatic Shotgun Cleaning

Ghost Recon

I am the owner of a semi-auto shotgun (Benelli M2) for about 3 years.

In that time, I'd say it's been out maybe 15 times, and I've put less than 100 cartridges through it.

I've never stripped, or cleaned it.

It's shooting fine, with no evidence of rust or sticky moving parts.

Looking down the barrel, I can see a minimal amount of residual debris.

Given my circumstances, how often should I be stripping, cleaning and oiling it?

Grizzly 45

By the sound of that amount of ammo you have put thru it and its an M2… The next general election count day in 5 years time would be fine!They are designed to be worked and are a semi MILSPEC design,so their life span can be up to and over 250K worth of shots.

Its a matter of preference, I have an M3 and after a days out ,a a pull thru just to keep the barrel clean and once a season maybe if heavily used a field strip and a compressed air blast to get rid of powder residue and wipe down is all it needs on the trigger mechanism and a barrel clean and metal parts wipe down with a lightly oiled rag on the exposed metal parts and is good.ONLY place I really clean is the choke tube threads on the choke and barrel,as they can lock up on any gun if left uncleaned. Unless you really abuse these guns they are well capable of functioning in adverse conditions and that round count and usage is nothing to them.

otmmyboy2

Just to add to Grizzzly above, a bit of copper grease on the choke threads when reinstalling will ensure they don't get friction/carbon locked between now and the next clean.

I will usually set aside a day each year where all the guns get looked at, shot or not, for any rust, residue, overdue cleaning, etc.
You can vary that a bit depending on the gun(some surface treatments are more prone to rust in our humidity than others) and the usage, but a handy way of doing it for a gun that doesn't see much use is every licence renewal, 3 years, just take it out and do a deep clean.
Easier to remember like that since you have a reminder in the post to clean your gun at most every 3 years 😉