Gun

Winchester Supreme Sporting

After many years the famous Winchester name once again graces an over-and-under shotgun. Can it live up to the brand's past reputation? Richard Rawlingson investigates.

The old Winchester 101 and its later derivatives was something of a landmark gun in the post-war history of the shotgun, one of the models that firmly established the over-and-under concept as the gun of choice for competition clay shooting. It was not especially radical in design terms, being loosely based on the Browning B25, but it handled well, was affordable and came with Japanese build quality. Thousands were sold and for many aficionados the shooting world has not been the same since they turned the factory into a car park. Look at the prices decent examples still fetch on the used market to see how well they are still regarded. Like many, my first gun was a 101 and I have always retained a soft spot for them.

Since the closure of the plant in Japan, the name has lain fallow for some time. The first attempt to revive it with the ill-fated 1001 (ten-oh-one) in the early nineties proved a costly failure and since then the Winchester name has only been found on semi-automatics and rifles. With such a heritage however, not to mention the continued strength of the Winchester brand for ammunition, the temptation for the Browning organisation to go back to it must have been very strong.

Well now they have succumbed to that temptation and introduced a Winchester for the new century in the form of the Supreme, a gun that was first announced this time last year and which is now finding its way onto the dealers' shelves. It will initially be available in just sporting and hunting versions. In reality, from the specification sheets, I can see very little difference between the two options other than the use of a narrower rib on the game model and game scene engraving rather than the plain finish of the sporter as shown in our photographs. With a price tag of around £xxx it will occupy a slot in the market a little below the old Winchester positioning. Clearly Browning Sports see little point in bringing in a direct competitor for their already established brands.

The big question then remains to be answered: will this be the new gun the fans have been waiting for or should the Winchester over-and-under have been allowed to remain a cherished memory?

Technical Overview

These are confusing times for us gun reviewers. Not so long ago we tested the new model from Franchi - owned by Beretta - and regular readers will recall that I found remarkable design similarities between that and the Winchester 101. Now we have a new Winchester, being built at the Fabrique National factory in Belgium (home of the Browning B25), and blow me down if it isn't a Beretta copy!

Now there is nothing new in the gun trade about picking up on a good design and making your own version of it. Half the Italian trade makes Perazzi copies and the Spanish industry is based on their interpretation of the classic English sidelock. And of course you have Miroku, who copied the Browning B25 so effectively they sold it back to Browning.

But there has always, it seems to me, been a fundamental philosophical divide between Browning and Beretta, notwithstanding the fact that the two companies have had close links in the past. The Beretta design is sold on its relative sleekness and the strength of the famous two-lug locking system, while Browning have made a virtue of their deep action, with its full-width locking bolt below the bottom barrel, and said never mind the looks, just see how it handles. It is the kind of unshakeable commitment that keeps BMW wedded to the rear-wheel drive concept while most other car makers are happy to transmit their power through the front wheels. To see them quite happily turning out products in the style of the other is a bit like Everton supporters suddenly wearing red and white and cheering Liverpool.

It is a fairly close Beretta copy too. The conical locking bolt locating in two lugs either side of the top barrel is virtually identical, as are the stub pins on which the barrels pivot. The ejector work follows Beretta practice, being contained entirely within the barrel monobloc rather than in the fore end in Browning/Miroku style. The only significant difference is the vestigial lump beneath the bottom barrel, which engages in a slot in the action floor.

I began to wonder how far the similarity extended, so the next step was to take off the stock to view the lockwork. The answer is not at all - the layout is quite different to Beretta and while it follows conventional boxlock principles is dissimilar to both the Italian guns and Miroku-made Brownings. Lock parts can sometimes be a bit rough and ready on production guns, probably on the basis that few buyers ever bother to look at them, but the quality of the machining on the Winchester's components was excellent. It is always reassuring if the bits you don't see have been made with the same care as the parts you do.

As ii say it is fairly conventional in layout, the second barrel selected by an inertia block and with the manual safety you would expect on a competition gun. The trigger blade can be set on one of two preset positions by slackening off a small locking screw and sliding it along a channel. On the basis that there seems to be plenty of room for more notches I am puzzled that only two positions are supplied, when a greater range of adjustment is clearly possible.

Like many of the Browning and Miroku guns, the Winchester features back-bored barrels, measuring .741" on my bore gauge (18.8mm metric) and chambered for 70mm cartridges. The spec sheet on the game version shows that it is chambered for magnum loads, so if you need that capability in an all-round gun, this might be a better choice. The gun is a multi-choke and because of the back-boring is fitted with the same Invector Plus chokes as similar Brownings. This means that the wide range of after-market chokes is available to fit, welcome not only because the gun comes with a rather mean selection of just three chokes, but also as an improvement on the rather basic Invectors.

The barrels themselves have a ventilated top rib, but solid mid, although they are ribless in the area hidden by the fore end, presumably in an effort to get the overall weight down. Our test gun had 28" tubes, weighing in at a still hefty 1800 grams (just under 4lbs). As the whole gun weighs 3.5kg (a little under 7¾ lbs) this may give you a clue to the overall balance, of which more later. There will be the option of 30" barrels.

Cosmetics

As you will see from the photographs the decoration on the Winchester can be described as minimalist. I applaud the decision not to try to make what is a relatively low cost gun into something it is not. Cheap and tacky decoration on budget guns is one of my pet hates, I would much rather the maker put all his time and effort into building the best gun for the money than slapping some nasty etched engraving on it, so full marks to FN there. The polished sides of the receiver are plain except for a curved reinforcing panel and the simple Supreme Sporting logo. The underside is similarly sparse.

The quality of the machining is again very good, tribute to the standards the latest CNC machines can achieve. All the minor furniture is also nicely executed with no rough edges or crude castings. I would say however that the quality of wood to metal fit on our example was not quite up to Miroku standards. The barrels are well made and have a satisfying deep gloss blacking.

The wood on the stock and fore end is well matched but you could only describe it as plain. The chequering on the fore end is interesting; it appears to have been embossed into the surface of the wood rather than cut in the conventional way. It looks neat enough and does not have the excessive roughness you can get on coarse chequering and presumably is much quicker to produce. The stock is finished off with a 20cm, rather squidgy, rubber recoil pad that has a surface some may find rather too sticky for sporting use. A coat of something like nail varnish usually cures that problem.

On Test

One of the attributes of the classic Winchester - and one of the reasons they have remained so popular - was excellent balance, even with longer barrels (and remember the fad for 32" tubes was largely a Winchester creation). Relatively thin walls gave Winchesters, particularly the later 5500 and 6500 series, lithe and fluid handling that could rival a B25 for a fraction of the price.

You will have guessed from what I have already said that this new model does not share those attributes. There has been a tendency for barrel thicknesses to increase over the last decade, partly to head off costly product liability problems in America, and partly due to the side effects of back-boring. Put crudely, back-bored barrels are basically more metal around a bigger hole and that usually means extra weight, as will the use of longer choke tubes.

We have already seen that these barrels are heavy, despite the ribless section. Removing weight there is in fact adding to the balance problem because it is making the barrels feel even more muzzle heavy. Compare this Winchester's barrel weight of 1800 grams with the new Beretta 682E. The model we tested last year had barrels weighing just 1350 grams, despite being two inches longer. That is a big difference, although I do feel that Beretta may have overdone it a bit in the opposite direction and gone too light.

This all means that the gun is seriously and excessively nose heavy, with ponderous handling and a tendency to exaggerate recoil because of the way the gun tends to pivot around the front hand. I reckon it needs several ounces of lead in the stock to get the balance to a more acceptable point. That would quicken up the handling although it is always going to be more heavy horse than polo pony.

Given the trend of recent times (and again those American influences) I also had fears that the trigger pulls could have been unduly heavy. While they were not to Miroku standards, at 5 ½ lbs, they could have been much worse. There is a touch of drag, but well within acceptable limits.

Summary

Would I have been less critical of this gun had it carried a different name? Perhaps I would. I wanted it to be good and it isn't - just adequate and the Winchester name deserves more than that somehow. There is plenty of competition in this sector now, not least from the Franchi Alcione, the stylish new Fabarms and the hardy perennial Lanber - not to mention Browning's own budget Medallist. It is not so easy to get away with lumbering handling at the lower end of the market these days, even if the gun costs just £xxx. The Supreme may well find itself a niche, but I suspect fans of the old Winchesters will not be rushing to part exchange their treasures. The faithful old Grand Europeans and 6500s will have to be patched up and thrust back into the action one more time.

More information: Browning Sports UK Ltd 01235 444100