I won’t lie. I’ve been a big Beretta fan since my days of dove hunting in Argentina and watching guys “clean and lubricate” 20-gauge Urikas with diesel fuel and a paintbrush after the guns had literally more than 100,000 shells through them, and they still ran like clocks. But the 1301 was never made for bird hunting, and anecdotal evidence means nothing. Accuracy tests with calipers and shot timers for splits do not lie.
Once again, there were zero malfunctions all day. I credit this to the rotating bolt of the Blink operating system, which is as fast as it is reliable. The Beretta 1301 Tactical Marine provided the fastest split among the evaluations at 0.13 seconds, and the average was 0.21 seconds. We also agreed that the Beretta had the best crossbolt safety of any gun we tested. The reversible safety sits in the front of the triggerguard, where your finger naturally rests. You push it off, and your finger slips right back to the trigger. Shotgun safeties at the rear of the triggerguard, behind the trigger, require the shooter to hold their finger unnaturally bent, or with their hand too far back on the tang until they flick it off and reposition their whole grip.
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Everyone loved this shotgun, but at 6.31 pounds before adding ammo, it was also the lightest of the shotguns we tested. Light shotguns are great when you have to carry them all day, but they also provide more felt recoil. Some guys don’t mind this: “Hey, when you have to shoot someone, you will never notice the recoil.”
But others weren’t so sure. “You still need to train with it, and 100 slugs through a light shotgun will beat you up a lot more than a heavy shotgun.” That said, while we all noticed more recoil, it was far from the most punishing gun we tested.
