As most of you that read these forums know I am a HUGE fan of the Mossberg 930. When I was at the NWTF convention in Nashville in ’07 the people at the Mossberg booth hinted that there was a 20GA autoloader in the works. I was hopeful, as were a lot of others, that it would be a scaled down 20GA version of the venerable 930. In November, I was lucky enough to see one at one of the distributors here in CT, I was quick to let everyone know that it wasn’t a “920”, but a Mossberg International SA-20. There was, of course, some initial disappointment that Mossberg didn’t make one of their own, but I gave them the benefit of the doubt and waited for some reviews, I waited, and waited, and waited some more….
I have only heard of one person that bought a 28” barreled SA-20 and he was happy with it, but a sample size of one, doesn’t make for a reliable basis for judgement.
Fast forward to March, turkey season is approaching and my son needs a 20GA autoloader (I have a 20GA super bantam model 500 for him, but the light weight of the gun is a disadvantage in terms of recoil). I begin my search, the 20GA Beretta 391 looks really nice, but I can’t justify spending $800+ on a “kid’s gun”. My dealer has had a lot of issues with the Charles Daly semi’s (more 12GA than 20GA, but still…). We were just about settled on a Remington 1100, but, new ones were expensive and used ones are almost impossible to find…
During my search I saw that Mossberg (International) was showing a “Bantam” model of the SA-20, it has a 24" barrel and a 13" LOP, I looked for more reviews and couldn’t find any, so I figured I’d “take one for the team”. I went down and talked with my dealer, he said they weren’t listed in his catalog yet, but he’d see what he could do… I give him some money and 30 days later I get a call from him that it has arrived.
I picked it up and initial impressions are very good!!. The gun is packaged with the barrel off and the overall packaging is really nice, actually better that my 930’s…
The gun comes with 3 drop spacers and 1 spacer for cast, it also comes with 5 choke tubes (the 930 only comes with 3), the choke tubes are packaged in a nice choke tube case with a very nice choke wrench.
The gun is made by
www.armsan.com in Turkey, from what I gather they make guns for other makers, too (the Smith & Wesson guns look extremely similar). It is supposedly a copy of a Beretta A30x series, I don’t know Berettas well enough to tell which model, if there’s any Beretta gurus that want to figure it out let me know….
Here are the initial pics, my son and I will be taking it to the range tomorrow, more reviews to follow….
If anyone wants to know something to specific, let me know…
