CONCLUSION

I was eager to shoot this gun soon after it arrived, so I scuttled up to Barbury Shooting School one afternoon with much excitement, the sort that shooting a .410 brings to every grown gun-lover. I entered the first stand, featuring a quartering-away right-to-left and a right-to-left looper. The first clay left the trap and came into view. I connected to the target, pushed off the front edge and missed.

Let’s try that again. I called the same target. Same procedure, same result. This time, however, I realised what I had done. If you use the standard amount of hand speed you would apply to a shot with your daily driver 12-bore, this little gun pushes out at Mach 3 in front of the target and a miss is generally the outcome. A couple more shots and the two targets were crushed under the power of a whopping 11g of No 7 shot loaded into a Hull Game and Clay cartridge.

I shot a few more stands with satisfactory results, settling on one of the rangier pairs I could find. To my surprise, a 40yard edge-on crosser was crunched every time, providing you placed the shot gracefully enough. At this point, I was sold on the gun. The SPZ .410 shoots very well, and short of investing in something like a Rizzini S2000 Mini, you will not find many that shoot or work better near this price.

The SPZ .410 shoots very well and Jonny reckons you won’t find many that work better at a similar price