Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Favorite Shotgun set up for dove?

Beretta 20ga will put you in love with a shotgun, very light shotgun and more important, no recoil to speak of.

My old Remington 3200 4 barrel set has served me well over the last 30 years or so. I only use the 12 gauge for the late season birds that are flying up around the stratosphere. I've never had to really use anything more than the 20 gauge with modified and full chokes. I usually load some 7/8 oz #8's (1280 fps) before the season, but I've got so many left over from years past I haven't had to load any in a couple of years. I've even got some 1 oz. loads left out there some where.

Yesterday was my opener and I decided to take out the 28 gauge barrels and give it a go. They're fixed choked skeet/skeet while my 12 and 20 have Briley choke tubes. I was shooting some 3/4 oz. Federal 8.5's sporting Clays factory loads that I had laying around. I did take a box of reloads with 3/4 oz. of #8's too. A ton of birds flying around Hondo, Texas and we were sitting in the right spot. I limited out and the fiance knocked down 12, but could only find 8. I'll go back next week and probably move up to he 20 gauge.

Doesn't matter at all to me.

I can miss equity well with all of them.

Won't get out till Nov this year but have used a 1100 25" barrel 28 gauge the past two years. IC choke, 8s & 71/2s. Initially thought IC would be too open but it works as long as I try to stay under 35 yards. I've used the 28 a lot for wild Valley quail and preserve chukars & bobwhites over my dog. Had my doubts about using it on doves but so far the 28's working at least as well as my 12 and 20 did.

Browning BPS Special Field 26” or 22”
Browning Citori White Lightning 26”
Browning Auto 5 Invector 26”
Remington 1100 26” RemChoke

What a good looking boy! I bet he can do double duty as a groundhog dog!

As far as dove guns goes, I’ll take a Beretta 390, 12 gauge, IC or Modified. A close second is an old Spanish SxS in 20 gauge. I believe it has been commandeered by my young son now. . He fell in love with it on our dove hunt this past weekend.

My Dove/Quail shotgun is a 870 Wingmaster 28 gauge, 25”barrel I/C choke. This gun fits me well and is easy carry when the Quail are just over in the next valley, a mile away! I shoot AA’a 7.5 and have for many many years. Won’t be changing anything this fall or the next or...

20 gauge 1949 Ithaca 37 with a full choke and Federal 8 shot.

Doves have normally been scarce here, sometimes get a few shots on a waterhole, sometimes find a decent feed field but nobody to help keep them moving. Got my revenge one year when the field across the creek had sunflowers on it and had just been combined a week or so before. More doves than I'd ever seen were using that field. I noticed that many were trading back and forth through a small gap in the hedgerow and setup in that spot. Had bird after bird coming right over my head and usually at a slower speed than normal. Kind of a station 8 high house, but slower with more time to get ready. I was shooting a Beretta 391 12 ga with IC choke and 1 1/8 oz 8s. Limited out with about that many shells. Sunflowers only lasted a couple years here and then the farmers went back to corn, wheat and beans. Sure wish they'd plant some more sunflowers

Well for pass shooting I use a Winchester 1200 pump with a full choke barrel off a Winchester 1400, for sitting between the waterhole and the sunflower field I use an 870 Wingmaster with an improved cylinder barrel on it. Usually Remington 1 1/8th ounce loads throwing 7 1/2 shot. Went out Memorial day and saw just two doves, didn't fire a shot.

He got into one the other day and the Groundhog was holding his own. I got him off and we called it a draw. 😁

Stevens 311 20ga. ic/m 1oz #8. Had this since I was 14, bought plenty since but this is still my favorite. Saved up grass mowing money up during the summer to buy it used. Wouldn't trade it for the world.
Patrick

If you ever get the chance to shoot a Rem 1100 in 28ga on doves, you will be spoiled forever, mod choke....like shooting a BB gun....stuff dies...near and far...

I like my SKB 680 SxS 20 gauge, choked IC/Mod with an English stock using 1 or 1 1/8 oz of #8’s or 9’s depending on expected ranges.

I also like my Nikko O/U “Shadow” bored skeet/skeet with 1 1/8 oz of 9’s on the first couple of days when they’re not quite as wary.😊

I was the “retriever” for my father for many years and he used a Remington Sportsman 58 and the standard “pigeon load” of 3 1/4, 1 1/4, 7 1/2. He even checked me out of school on occasion to go dove hunting. On one hunt, we were walking out into a harvested cornfield and he was carrying a little folding stool under his left arm and his shotgun in his right hand and the butt under his armpit. A dove came flying by and he pulled up with one hand nailed that sucker. Talk about “bragging rights” with your buds.

A few years later I was on my first hunt carrying a gun and the doves looked like flocks of blackbirds feeding on a cut millet at my uncles’s farm. I was carrying a Savage 24 O/U 22/410 with 3/4 oz #7 1/2. I was walking down a fence line to my stand and as a dove came flying by, I killed him with my first shot fired at a dove😀. Needless to say, the rest of the afternoon didn’t go as well. They were so thick I got to the point where I could fire and reload fast enough to get a second shot. I burned up some ammo that weekend and the following weekend but I got my limit when some of my Dad’s friends didn’t

keith,

"Beretta 20ga will put you in love with a shotgun, very light shotgun and more important, no recoil to speak of."

"If you ever get the chance to shoot a Rem 1100 in 28ga on doves, you will be spoiled forever, mod choke....like shooting a BB gun....stuff dies...near and far..."

Two posts, two different answers. Which one?

We don't have much to concentrate doves up here so my main gun is whatever I have in hand when a dove flies by. So far, that has been a Browning Gold 3.5" Hunter. Fortunately, the doves were flying after the geese stopped which gave us time to switch to steel 7s. I have 9 doves to my name so far, six from that goose hunting outing, the other three while walking the dogs.

Finances has me missing any classic dove hunting trips so whatever I pick up will be it for dove. The one wheat field in the area that has been attracting doves is also the best goose hunting so I don't want to burn it by shooting the relatively few doves around. With highs in the 60's and a storm front moving in, a number of doves should be heading south.

I think my new perfect set up is skeet #1 and #2 in an old Winchester 101 12 gauge Diamond grade. But I will be shooting my grade 6 Belgian Browning 20 with IC & M as well. They both feel right. If only I could shoot as well as when I was a teen when I went 67 straight and still had shells from the third box left over, in Mexico.

1100 26" 20,choked light modified...

I have an old Rem 1100. I shoot the lightest 2 3/4 field load I can find that is sold by the case in #8.

I have a vent-ribbed I/C skeet barrel and a 26 in MOD field barrel with just a brass pin on the end.

I use the Mod barrel if I'm posted at the edge of the field. However, if I have my druthers, I prefer to sit out in the middle with the skeet barrel and get the ones coming straight at me. I wait until the last possible moment and get that look of supreme existential surprise in the bird's eyes. They usually cup and hang there for an instant almost motionless.

Winchester M1200 in 20ga mod choke w / 7.5’s. Shots tend to a bunch over 30yards. And fast.