Stan: The only weakness of the Beretta O/U design I'm aware of is the hammers. I've seen three broken hammers over the years, all on 682 trap guns. The 680 series hammers seem to be all identical. This seems to be a fatigue issue, as all failures were on guns that were well used.
If yours is getting up there in total rounds fired, I'd recommend either replacing the hammers before your next trip or taking a set of spares and some tools. Replacement is very easy, just pull the stock, drift the axle partially out, replace hammer, pull the tail of the hammer strut out far enough with a pliers to reseat the strut in the hammer, and reassemble. It could be done in the field in a few minutes if you know how.
Set of spares from Coles is under fifty bucks.
P.S. The stock bolt is likely to be a 6mm hex.
Thanks for that suggestion, Shotgunjones. I will definitely have some spares when I go back.
One other observation I have noted while shooting down there with some twenty-odd different shooters on the two trips. This will rile some I know, but hey, here it is anyway. On the first trip all the other guys were shooting semi-automatics which, by the way, are recommended by the "experts" for recoil reduction. Every one of those guys except one had severe bruising on their shoulders from the shooting. I never did with the O/U. Next trip everyone else in a group of seventeen started out shooting automatics. All were complaining after the first day of sore shoulders. One friend had taken his Kreighoff 20 gauge and switched to it. His recoil issues went away. My take on it. I watched many of them shoot their guns in an effort to understand the problem. Most mount their guns with their bodies not square enough to the axis of the gun. The angle of butt to shoulder induces a sliding movement in recoil which accentuates pain and bruising. The moving parts in the gun seem to exxagerate this gun movement as well. Though the improper mount is a big part of the problem I really believe that the slamming of the breech bolt increases the liklihood of the gun moving out of position on the shoulder.It always moves further out toward the arm, causing some drastic bruising.
It is absolutely unnecessary to take anything more than a 20 gauge and use anything more than 7/8 oz. loads for 99% of the shooting I have encountered there. I have only had one stand where I was faced with very high birds. The bird boy was anticipating this and brought a few boxes of 1 oz. loads. I tried them, saw that the extra 1/8 oz. was unnecessary even on the very high birds, and went back to the 7/8 oz. with just a bit more choke.
These are just my observations and carry no more weight than anyone elses' who has been there.
Stan
