EGE 12-bore

This well-built Turkish over-and-under offers a lot of gun for your money, says Mark Heath

- Mark Heath

When the deputy editor told me he had arranged for an EGE shotgun to be sent to me for review, I had to admit I had never heard of it. “It’s coming from ASI,” he added. It must be OK then, I thought, if it is coming from the main UK importer of AYA and Rizzini.

A little research revealed that EGE was founded in Istanbul by Ertugrul Say damoglu and Berat Ozan Ozsahin in 2018, having spent 10 years working together in the Turkish gun trade. The company offers a variety of shotguns including single barrel, side-by-side, over-and-under, both inertia and gas-operated semi-automatics, pump-action and a magazine-fed bullpup style shotgun that it mentions can be used for “home protection”. Not sure we need that one in the UK.

Warranty

The gun arrived at the shooting school and fortunately it was a 12- bore over-and-under rather than the one for home defence. Some of the instructors were trying to guess the retail price of the gun and were thinking between £1,000 and £1,500. To put their minds at rest, I made a quick phone call to ASI where I was slightly amazed to be informed that the full retail price is £599 and that it comes with a five-year warranty.

The test gun, a demonstrator 12- bore over-and-under, features a plain black action and Turkish walnut with some very straight grain through the stock. It weighs 7lb 7oz and has 30in multichoke barrels with five chokes and a choke key supplied. The barrels weigh 1,490g and come over-bored at 18.6mm with 3in chambers. The top and mid ribs are both vented and well finished both in terms of the blacking and the engineering.