DD..at the rate Central WA is burning up, ALL the birds might be in the Deschutes Canyon in a few days! wink

EVO-good info from both DD and EL-Parker. I wasn't going to comment, as you normally just argue against someones good advice until they quit trying to help you. But, here it goes...from someone who has shot a couple hundred thousand rounds of trap shells; if you're seriously interested in a "decent" shotgun for birds and recretaional clay bird shooting, borrow the Citori for the first hunt or get a 26-28" vent rib barrel with choke tubes for the mossberg for now. Both options should provide you with no excuses for equipment failure at Miller Ranch. I've never paid for hunting (except for my own leases), but I've hunted near their perimeter and it's great habitat.

Then look for a 3"-12ga Beretta 303 semi-auto, with 28" barrel with choke tubes. Bullet proof gun, gas operated platform that's light weight, that's under $1000. The old Browning B-80 was built by Beretta (Beretta 301 & 302 were the predecessors). Still popular in the sporting clay world, and the hunting game also. Personally, I never liked having only 2 shots bird hunting...if I was going to work that hard I wanted to kill 3 birds when they got up (especially wild pheasants). Doesn't happen hardly ever on pheasants in this state anymore, but if you get the chance with pheasants you want to be the HERO!

I have a couple of 870 20ga LW's and a 1100 20ga LW also. Great upland bird guns. One of my favorites was a 1100 sporting clay 28ga, that just killed everything! Pointed like a paintbrush! Only reason I sold it, was that the Feds were going to make steel shoot mandatory for Dove hunting, and I didn't want the bother trying to locate steel ammo. In hindsight, that rule only pertains to certain areas.
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..."the clock looked at me just like the devil in disguise"...