Beretta Vittoria comparison £1,815/£2,145

Beretta’s Silver Pigeon series takes a lot of beating and its smaller Vittoria model comes in two versions, put to the test by Mark Heath

- Mark Heath

OUR VERDICT

The Beretta Silver Pigeon I 12-bore in the Vittoria format is aimed at shooters who need a shorter stock. We pitted two models — field and competition — against each other to compare their performance.

The guns themselves are almost identical in that they are both the well documented Silver Pigeon actions of which there are hundreds of thousands in circulation. These are among the goto guns for many shooters with a passion for either game or clays.

We gave both guns an early-morning workout at the shooting school, for which I was joined by two of our instructors. Richard Weller, though an excellent all-round Shot, is not exactly the target market given that he is 6ft 4in and not built for ballet either so it would be an interesting test .

Starting with driven targets shooting school and a variety of cartridges from 21g to 28g, both guns were easy to shoot despite the issues of fit. As instructors we become used to a wide range of guns and can switch between different configurations without too much difficulty. Both guns handled very well with no vices, the usual excellent Beretta trigger pulls and both requiring exactly the same pressure. The ejector timing was identical.

We left the choke in the guns that they arrived with, which were half and full, and consequently the clays were smoking fairly frequently. We all favoured the Sporter marginally, as the slightly heavier barrel made it a little steadier and smoother to shoot, but none of us is slight of stature.