Bought my 12 year old son a new Weatherby Element 20ga a few months back. Broke the gun in with some Federal dove loads and had zero issues and functioned perfectly the first 100-150 rounds. Took it out again today and he had 4 or 5 jams with both federal and winchester dove loads this time in about 40-50 total shots.

Anyone have any experience or insight with this particular model at all? It seems to be very similar to my Franchi Affinity, and I have had many inertia shotguns over the years and never had and jamming issues with lite or heavy loads.

Inertia driven I assume. A smaller person not holding it firmly can cause some issues like you describe. May not be the case but that's the first thing I would check into. Also make sure the ammo you're shooting is up to their minimum standards . Sometime 20 gauges are a bit more finicky

How is it jamming? It is jamming while ejecting? Jamming when feeding? Is is jamming with heavier loads, or just lighyt dove loads? Did you clean it thoroughly before it started jamming?

Correct it is inertia. I was thinking the same thing and tried it myself for about 10 rounds and had 2 jams.



It is jamming while ejecting. The fired shell just about ejects but gets stuck, and obviously the next round gets stuck under it. I have not tried any heavier loads out of it yet as I have been letting him shoot it and didn’t want to give him too much recoil to start. I’ll try some 3” shells myself to see if it continues to jam. The gun was pretty loaded with grease when I bought it but it was stripped down and fully cleaned.

My experience witn intertia guns is limited to 12 gauge. But I've found intertias function better with heavier loads. "Dove" loads in 20 guage tend to be 7/8 oz. I'd try some 1 oz loads and see how they do. I'd also clean it again if you have't recently.

Most of my Benelli’s and Franchi’s over the years have been 12ga as well. I did have a 20ga Montefeltro around 15-20 years ago and that thing functioned everything perfectly over thousands of rounds.

Clean the chamber, crap residuals in the chamber is rough on the ejection cycle...mb

Avoiding the Winchester shells will help, the thin brass expands too much.

Yeah they were 7/8oz loads so thats not the issue.



I’m gonna strip it down and clean it again. It was pretty heavily greased from the factory so maybe I didn’t get it all out the first time.

At first it was only jamming with Winchester shells but then started to do it with Federals as well.

They may be 7/8 oz loads but are they 1300 FPS loads?
On my SA-08's (have 2) they both required about 2 boxes of heavy loads to be shot thru them before they would function correctly. (both are 20 ga)
I paid a kid I know $5 to shoot the 2 boxes of heavy field loads thru the last one because of a shoulder issue I had at the time. I told him to load and shoot them fast as he could. First few shells worked just fine but then it jammed. I told him to keep shooting and by the end of the first box, it smoothed out and started working fine. No jams on the second box. The kid was having a ball and could not believe I would pay him to shoot my gun.

I agree with the statement above, that 20 gauges can be more problematic at times. I’m curious to see if running some heavy loads through it fixes the problem.

May have NOTHING to do with the issue, but does whatever ammo you've shot have actual brass heads, or the shiny silver heads that a lot of the cheaper ammo these days has? At the gun shop I work in, we've had numerous guns of different brands come thru for functioning issues. Almost all the time they are using the "silver" (is it aluminum?) head ammo. As someone else said, they swell. Without fail, we run about 10 rounds of Estate with brass heads thru them and they function perfectly. I have personally tried to shoot some of the "silver" heads in my old Remington model 11 20ga and it will sometimes rip the edge of the rim off, requiring a cleaning rod to push the empty out.

Reread the original Post in this. Then I'm remembering shooting some Walmart Winchester and Federal promo loads. Different gun happened to be a gas gun but the federal shop flawlessly in the Winchester gave some issues. Both instances of these they were rated at 1200 ft per second. The federals actually shot slightly faster through the chronograph and the Winchester don't know if that's the whole issue or not. Don't know if it's the same OP but quite the coincidence federal work good Winchester was it.
Come to think of it I'm pretty sure the Winchester shells I had were the " universal". That give me the issues.