Category: All About Guns

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Iwas skeptical when the folks from Benelli invited me to take their first-ever over/under shotgun on a high-volume South American bird hunt last year. I didn’t think the lightweight 12-gauge, called the 828U, could take the abuse that thousands of shells can deliver to a gun in a single day. I’ve seen robust semi-autos fall to pieces in the dove fields of Argentina. But even more personally, I wasn’t sure my shoulder was up to the punishment of the daily pounding of spicy dove loads, interspersed with a steady diet of magnum duck loads. After all, the 828U with 28-inch barrels weighs only 6.6 pounds and feels even lighter.

But Benelli was persuasive, so I packed a recoil-absorbing shoulder pad—my hunting buddies call it a “sissy pillow”—to help tame the kick, and I headed to Uruguay’s bird-rich interior to hunt doves, ducks, and perdiz, the so-called false partridge of the pampas.

A First for Benelli
The name Benelli, of course, is synonymous with semi-automatic shotguns. The Italian company’s family of inertia-driven guns includes the versatile M4, M2, Ethos, Super Black Eagle, and Vinci. When Benelli announced it would produce an over/under, brand loyalists sniffed almost as dismissively as connoisseurs of traditional Italian doubles. No way could a stodgy over/­under continue the company’s reputation for technologically advanced operation, pronounced the former. No way could a double-barreled Benelli, with its modern styling, perpetuate Italy’s standards for Old World craftsmanship, denounced the latter.

What I discovered in Uruguay is that the 828U is very much a 21st-century over/under. It is elegant, in the same over-the-top way a Baroque castle is elegant, layered with rococo flourishes. And, like other Benellis, it is technologically advanced. The 828U packs more features into what is at heart a simple mechanism than you’d notice from its glammy exterior.

Aft of the cryogenically treated—and distinctively separated­—barrels, the Benelli’s steel breech block mates into steel races machined into its weight-saving aluminum receiver. The design contains pressure to the barrels and doesn’t allow it to transfer to the floating bolt face or to the hinge pins, the linkage that is often first to fail on traditional over/under shotguns.

That’s a great attribute for a high-volume shotgun, but my shoulder celebrated the Benelli’s less visible technology: recoil-­eating buffers embedded in the stock. The polymer fingers flex in proportion to the directional recoil exerted by charges of different intensity. A light target shotshell might trigger only one level of buffers. A high-brass field load might activate two levels, and a magnum duck load might bring the whole system of baffles into play.

A recoil-reducing gel pad in the comb and a shim system that allows shooters to customize cast and drop to their anatomy—as a lefty, I like a little bit of cast—makes the 6 ½-pound 828U a pleasure to shoot with almost any load. I didn’t need my sissy pillow after all.

The Birds of Uruguay
So far, so good. But how would the gun handle the variety of bird hunting that David Denies’ Uruguay Lodge would throw at us? Our first shoot was for eared doves. Our group drove into a vast cattle pasture and set up facing a grove of spiky trees that looked like the hawthorns of my native Missouri. It was evening, and doves bombed into the trees looking to roost. Others rocketed across the open pasture. Shots were often tricky and required everything from sustained leads for long crossers to quick points at acrobatic incomers. I went through four cases of shells to down maybe 150 birds, not exactly stellar shooting, but these weren’t the routine 20-yard quartering shots of Argentina, either.

The next morning we hunted ducks, a mix of Brazilian teal, yellow-billed pintails, and rosy-billed pochards. There’s nothing particularly tough about a South American duck hunt. Little hunting pressure and copious amounts of corn make for cooperative birds. But the liberal limits and ounce-and-a-half lead loads gave me ample opportunity to experience the 828U’s ability to tame recoil. My main complaint with the Benelli was that I was limited to only two shots.

Even after the gun went down in the Uruguayan mud—a slurry of cow dung and pampas sludge—the 828U kept performing, though I routinely struggled to hit right-to-left crossers.

Each day, we spent a few hours hunting perdiz, little quail-sized flushing birds that are related to kiwi. Perdiz love to scatter in vast fields of knee-high grass, where they’ll fly only when approached by a pointing dog. It’s a game for wide-ranging dogs and long-legged hunters. And it’s a game for the 828U. Of all the hunting I did in Uruguay, the Benelli was best suited for perdiz. The light gun balanced beautifully just fore of the hinge, and it jumped to my shoulder almost of its own volition.

It handled towering birds and wild flushers. It scratched out doubles on covey rises, and was such an easy-carrying gun, I could have hunted all the way to Paraguay had I not been called away to hunt more doves.

One Gun for Every Hunt?
In idle moments back home—usually when the ducks stop flying—my friends and I kick about a simple question: If you could own only one shotgun, and use it for all your hunting, what would it be? Most of us answer a reliable pump gun, though some favor lighter semi-autos for mornings of geese and afternoons chasing pheasants and grouse, plus the occasional wild turkey.

Not once, in years of asking that question, has someone recommended an over/under. My experience with the 828U makes it an unexpected candidate for the one-gun award.

It is not a cheap gun—the wood-stocked version I shot retails for $2,500. But when you consider all the technology and styling of the Benelli, it’s on the accessible side of Italian over/unders. And its recoil-eating features, plus a mechanism that should never wear out—and if for some reason it does, you simply replace the steel breech—make it an heirloom gun that you can shoot all you want before passing it on.

The best testament I can give the Benelli is that, after my return from Uruguay, I held onto the gun. I wanted to use it for Montana’s pheasant and duck seasons. And to show it off to my skeptical buddies.

Legendary Marine Colonel John Dean “Jeff” Cooper was possibly one of the greatest ambassadors of the arts of combat shooting. The Colonel was and remains among the most influential thinkers on modern tactical shooting yet his greatest foray into the handgun market was the ill-fated Bren Ten.

WHAT COL COOPER WANTED IN A HANDGUN

Though he often taught pistol with 1911s, Cooper was a fan of the Czech designed CZ-75, a 1970s double stack 9mm with great ergonomics. The Colonel liked everything there was about the CZ, except its caliber, deeming it too low-powered.  After reading an article Cooper wrote about the CZ and its perceived limitations, two like-minded gunmakers, Tom Dornaus and Mike Dixon, reworked the basically public domain design, stretching it out to a 10-shot doublestack magazine holding .45 ACP.

Bren Ten in 10mm. note the Cooper Raven on the frame.

This gun in hand, they went to talk to the Colonel.

PROTOTYPES

Dixon and Dornaus brought Colonel Cooper in as an unpaid consultant and he liked the potential of what

Comparison of pistol rounds including 10mm.

the D&D guys called the CSP-80 (Combat Service Pistol of 1980). This early gun used a short recoil operated, locked breech semi-automatic pistol with a Browning Hi-Power style linkless system. Cooper suggested they change the caliber from .45 ACP to a new (and very hot) .40 cal. round and even offered the use of his signature raven image to grace the gun’s frame. The .40 Special morphed into the 10mm Auto once Norma in Sweden got a hold of the design, while the CSP-80 designation was changed to Bren (after Brno the town that the CZ plant is in).  The Bren Ten was christened with the ‘Ten’ alluding to both the caliber and magazine capacity.

Bren Ten above Jeff Cooper’s signature raven insignia.

FINAL DESIGN

Bren Ten diagram.

The final design incorporated a single-action/double action capability with the ability to be carried either cocked and locked (like the 1911) or with the hammer down. The gun had a huge tactile loaded chamber indicator down the right hand side of the slide, a firing pin safety, and a thumb safety. Aggressive front and rear grooves and the pebbled grips gave the large framed handgun a good level of control. The Bren Ten used so-called Power-Seal rifling which advertised better accuracy at long range. This, coupled with the spicy 10mm round made the pistol fully capable of taking game or winning combat engagements out to 50-yards and beyond.

It was very rugged with an all-carbon steel frame and slide; just plain old 1980s sexy. This also meant the gun was quite heavy, at 38-ounces with its 5-inch barrel and 8.75-inch overall length. By 1982, the gun was being rushed into low-rate production by the newly formed Dornaus & Dixon Enterprises, Inc., and soon appeared in the hands of fictional Miami Vice detective Sonny Crockett. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Bren Ten standard.

TEETHING PROBLEMS

When we said ‘rushed into production’ we weren’t kidding: the Bren Ten went from the drawing board to the field in just under three years. Unfortunately, this made the first customers essentially beta testers and when minor problems came up with the gun’s handling, warranty issues threw a wrench in the assembly line. Some early Brens even shipped without magazines, as supplies that worked (the original Mec Gar mags did not) were low. While this wouldn’t have hurt a large company like S&W or Ruger, it was disastrous to a new gunmaker with a single product line.

Shooting the Bren 10 with the original load was a beast, compared by many to ripping a .44 Auto Mag.  Even with today’s underpowered loads it has stout recoil due to the high bore axis incorporated into the design. There are a number of Brens floating around that have suffered slide failures or even frame fatigue after firing a good bit of the old ‘single malt’ 10 mil ammo.  Rare but significant problems like these further contributed to the gun’s demise. The ammo itself never caught on in its full power loadings and almost died out in the 1990s had it not been for the Colt Delta Elite and the S&W 1006.

Even two tones couldn’t save the Bren Ten.

Despite all of these fatal flaws, the gun was still a good, strong attempt at being perfect and much like the legend of Icarus, the boy who learned to fly but got too close to the sun, the Bren 10 was something of an over-reach. In an attempt to expand, the company tried to introduce variants such as an all-black “Special Forces Model” as well as a chromed slide model (similar to the one carried in Miami Vice), but it was just adding lead to the balloon.

Construction costs of such a strong firearm, coupled with the limited operating capital of a small business, compounded by warranty work on early guns proved too much for the company and Dornaus & Dixon shut their doors in 1986. Cooper himself even admitted the pistol was “not entirely sound” in 2004.

OTHER 10MM PISTOLS

Today the 10mm auto pistol is still around with the Glock Model 20, Colt Delta’s and legacy S&W Model 1006’s being readily available for much cheaper than the D&D special. Vltor teased the market for years with bringing a redesigned Bren Ten back as the ‘Fortis’—but no guns ever showed up.

The never released Vltor ‘Fortis’, a redesign of the Bren Ten.

In the 1990s, Tanfoglio of Italy, known for their EAA Witness series of CZ-75 clones in 9mm and 45ACP, brought out a 10mm Auto version. This gun was many of the things the Bren Ten tried to be but wasn’t, yet

A big ol’ box of expensive 10mm ammo.

still suffered from cracked slides if shot often with hot ammo. However, these spaghetti 10-millys can be found for around the $400 mark—which may leave some change to put towards the rare ammo.

Speaking of which, current 10mm Auto that is on the market from PMC, Hornady, Federal, CCI and others is loaded much lighter than the old school stuff the Bren Ten was made for and as such is often snidely called “-P” because of this fact. Even this compromise ammo is expensive, with current Gunbot quotes all going well over $1 per round.

COLLECTABILITY TODAY

Sonny Crockett (Don Johnson) levels out a Bren Ten on Miami Vice.

Genuine Dorius and Dixon B10s in good condition, especially with the correct plain white craft paper box with the manual, are crazy rare. Just under 1500 of them left the factory before and collectors have snatched most up. The early Miami Vice tie-in has also ensured that a generation that grew up watching Crockett and Tubbs will keep an interest in these rare hoglegs.

The Standard Model is the most common of these rare guns with the slightly shorter (4-inch barrel) Special Forces guns bringing higher prices. When we say higher prices, we mean don’t expect to get a real D&D Inc. Bren Ten Standard for less than $2K.

Pastel shirts, designer stubble, and Ferraris’ not included.