By Dick Jones
Pikesville, MD – -(Ammoland.com)- Once the press conference is over in Tuscany, Italy and the pretty girl has held up the shotgun while everyone clamors around with a camera, there’s a much more defining moment.
It’s the moment when the gun is in your hands, and the arm of the trap is cocked and loaded with the first clay you’ll shoot with it.
In that moment, there are a lot of considerations. First is the reaction to the gun on a visual level. I’m old enough to remember, and still own guns with hand cut engraving.
While rolled engraving is attractive, I still like to see the crisp cuts of the real thing, cut by hand by humans with years of practice. One of my first impressions on the Beretta 690 Field III was just how good rolled engraving can look. I only carry reading glasses to see fine details, and I had to put my readers on to tell the engraving was rolled. The coin-finished, double-fenced receiver was well covered with a pleasing pattern that was attractive from any angle, no matter where you looked. Metal finish was bright and reflected time spent polishing before the metal was blued.
The oil finish on the wood of the Beretta 690 Field III was subdued, but with enough clarity to allow full appreciation of the high figuring and color of the wood. Wood-to-metal fit is about average for a gun of this grade. The wood is slightly proud, but as an owner of a lot of vintage guns, I know wood shrinks over long periods of time and the Beretta 690 Field III is certainly a fine enough gun to eventually become a family heirloom, reverenced in memory as part of a family’s history in the field.
My next impressions were tactile in the feel of the lever as it moved….
Read the rest of Shooting the New Beretta 690 Field III Over/Under Shotgun at Shotgun Life: https://tiny.cc/2fcfjx
