Simon Reinhold

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THE MOST POPULAR SHOTGUN EVER?

It’s one of the best known, best-selling, shotgun designs of all time but does that make the Beretta Silver Pigeon or 68 series one of the best guns of all time?

DARWINIAN GUNMAKING

Gun making is a little like the industrial version of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. The most adaptable survive. The best traits of those guns which have come before are taken and appear on the new models while unsuccessful design traits are dropped. Looking at the Silver Pigeon in light of this gives us some clues as to why it was quite so popular with the gun-buying public. It might surprise you to learn that the inspiration and heritage of the gun’s design are deep-rooted in the British gun trade, although the rival that spurred the creative types in Northern Italy to produce a rival came from John Moses Browning.

Although Beretta is one of the oldest gunmakers in existence dating back to 1526, by 1860 they were making around 300 guns a year. Since the turn of the century, John Moses Browning had been developing his ’superposed’ over and under shotgun and when he finally brought it to the market in 1931 it began to dominate the shotgun market in all parts except the UK. Here we maintained our game shooting traditions, and the gun trade in London and Birmingham still flourished with the economic driver of the British Empire where guns were used both in conquest and in recreation.

TULIO MARENGONI

Because of the popularity of the newly designed over and under, in the early 1930’s Pietro Beretta and his chief engineer and designer Tulio Marengoni set out to design a shotgun that could eclipse the Browning’s popularity.

What they came up with in 1934 took its design inspiration from Boss & Co. 'makers of best guns only' in London. It is as if the Italian duo had looked at the Browning and decided they didn’t like the chunky, inelegant action. To gain the sleek lines that seem to epitomise Italian industrial design throughout the 20th century they dispensed with the lump on the bottom of the Browning that pivoted around a rounded crossbar. This 'SO' as it was called was costly to make and took considerable skill from the craftsmen in the Gardone factory. It was not the answer to the problem of Browning domination, but it was a significant step forward in design.

THE SILVER PIGEON EVOLVES

To pull the rug from under Browning they needed to compete in reliability, handling, and most significantly, price. The handmade 'SO' was too expensive. WWII intervened, forced a cessation in competition between the two firms as military needs dominated for the next decade and a half, but in the 1950’s more ancestors of the 68 series and the Silver pigeon we know today came into being.

No one has been able to pinpoint the origin of the design of the Silver Pigeon, but well-known gun writer Mike Yardley has a theory about a missing link. After the 'SO' came the ASE and then there is a gap in the family tree. “There is a very interesting gun in the Beretta museum. A sidelock 20-bore prototype made in Ergal (aluminium alloy) in the mid 1940’s. It is a development of the 'S1940’ with a new action design looking significantly like our much loved Silver Pigeon in profile."

LUMPS REMOVED

The Italian design team had dispensed with the lump that pivoted around a crossbar. They had done away with the locking bolt that came forward from the action to slide into a notch locking the gun together. Instead, they hinged the barrels around two trunnions on either side of the action and the lock-up came from two pins that sprang forward out of the face when the action closed. This was aided by the angled shoulders on the outside of the barrels that brought everything together. This gave the gun a much shallower profile that we see in the models that appeared in the 1950’s - the S55, S56, and S57.

They were reliable, good value, handled superbly and came in a variety of models to suit both game and trap shooting.

With a growing reputation throughout the 1960s and ’70s, a great design was then introduced to powerful marketing and the guns appeared in the UK market.

BRITISH DECLINE

The British gun trade was in severe decline with many of the famous firms either having amalgamated or evaporated from the trade. Gunmark as it was then (we now know it as GMK) offered an S57 EL ('Extra Luso’ or Extra Lovely in English) as part of their sponsorship of the British Skeet Championships. When I asked him about it, Barry Simpson told me “I won the title that year shooting 125 straight with my Miroku and the prize was this S57EL. After I won it I never shot that Miroku again and shot the 57 from then on.” Such was the draw and quality of the newest product on the scene.

Before setting up Simpsons of Newmarket, Barry was a senior member of the sales team for Gunmark, Beretta’s main agent in the UK. In the early days, the guns were essentially either trap guns or game guns. Barry decided that he would put a set of trap barrels onto a game action and was astonished that the fit and ejectors were perfect. Others admired it so much that he told the factory “you really ought to offer this you know.”

By the early 1980s, the British gun trade's severe decline was all but complete. Only the major players remained as the customers moved away from side by sides towards over and unders commonly found in the clay shooting scene, a scene increasingly dominated by Beretta.

In the 1990s the 686 and 687 series was rebranded the 'Silver Pigeon' it is said for the American market. There was already a popular pistol called the 686 and marketeers felt American shooters would respond better to a name rather than a number - the 'Silver Pigeon' as a name was created. It has become so ubiquitous that it seems it has been with us a lot longer. I have owned three myself.

NEW CONTENDERS

It is not solely the power of the Italian industrial juggernaut's marketing prowess that has made the 'Silver Pigeon' the stalwart we know today. Its enduring popularity (it has just been relaunched to much fanfare) is a combination of reliability and versatility. Despite a slow evolution to begin with, with the help of their agents around the world, there is now no niche of shotgun shooting that this innovative design has not been adapted to fit. It has to be regarded as one of the best designs of all time, but it should be remembered that Beretta taking the greatest designs of the past and evolving them to fit a modern world, is exactly what the Turkish gun trade is in the process of doing. The Italian and American heavyweights may have taken the British title, but both should be aware there are up and coming contenders looking for a shot at the title.

first published in the shooting times, september 2020