First off, this is a LOT of gun for the money. My go to wing shooting gun is a Beretta O/U so I am used to a good quality shotgun and I am impressed with the Stoeger Condor.
I was looking for a 410 for early season squirrel hunting and could not find anything I liked. However, while at Franklin's in Athens I saw this shotgun in 28ga. I had always wondered about the little 28 and had heard some good things about them from shotgun elitists. It was only $415.00, so it was less than the 870 pumps in 410 I was looking at. I figured "what the hell" and went ahead and got it. Good decision!
This is a very nice handling little shotgun and it's built like a tank. It takes interchangeable choke tubes and comes with a I. C. and Mod. tube. It does not have a barrel selector on the safety. It always shoots the under barrel first.
I did not have a chance to take it to the range to pattern it before my first hunt with it. I put the Mod tube in the under barrel for best range on my first shot. I got two shots that morning and dropped two squirrels that barely twitched. I was shooting Fed High Brass #6.
I wanted to get a variety of choke tubes. I especially wanted a Full for squirrel hunting. This is when things got a little interesting.
As best as I can tell Stoeger does not make choke tubes. Everything I found says that the Stoeger will take Browning Invector (not Invector Plus), Winchester and Mossberg tubes. GREAT! No problem getting tubes, but....
When I got the Browning tubes they fit the threads and matched the seating depth of the original tubes, but were much longer. They stick out the end of the barrels like extended tubes but are designed as flush mounts. Well OK, so they are a poor mans extended tube. Nothing wrong with that, right? Wrong.
I went hunting again with the new tubes (still had not patterned the gun) and had a very different experience. I killed five squirrels, but wounded three others that escaped. I REALLY HATE doing that. I ended up simply shooting the rest twice without pause to evaluate the results of the first shot. Something was definitely wrong!
I went to the range almost immediately from coming out of the woods. I patterned the gun with the Browning tubes I had been hunting with. Full choke in the under barrel and Mod in the upper.
The Full choke tube was VERY tight and that's a good thing. Unfortunately, it was also about eight inches low at 20 yards. My point of aim only had a couple of flyers in it. That's why I was getting the wounded, rather than cleanly killed, squirrels. The Mod tube was also pretty tight and about four inches low. That's why the double taps were working. It was the upper/Mod barrel that was killing them, not the under/Full barrel. One good thing is that both barrels were dead on horizontally. I had a suspicion this problem may be being caused by the unsupported flush mount tubes.
I switched back to the shorter tubes that came with the gun. I put the Mod in the under barrel and the I. C. in the upper. With the original tubes it was a different story. The under barrel was still low, but only about four inches and the upper was about two inches low. With the original tubes the barrels are regulated to within two inches of each other at 20 yards. That is perfectly acceptable and the issue with low POI was easily solved with a 3/16 inch thick Kick-Eez cheek pad.
This gun also shoots very tight. When I saw how tight the Mod tube was, I backed up to 35 yards as an experiment. No problem! Dead squirrel patter. Hell, dead TURKEY pattern. And that was with lead shot. Can't wait to see what it will do with a properly fitted full choke and a steel turkey load! Now all I have to do is figure out what the actual proper choke tubes are. Oh well, that's just a call to Stoeger on Monday.
The bottom line is that this is a VERY nice O/U shotgun for the money. The biggest issue with inexpensive O/U shotguns is barrel regulation. Most of them are poorly regulated and their just isn't much you can do about it. That's not a worry with the Stoeger Condor. I should have known. Stoeger is a subsidiary of Beretta after all.
Buy with confidence. Just make sure you get the right choke tubes to start with.
Edit: Well, I found out what the choke tube issue is. Most of the on line retailers are IDIOTS. They are refereeing to the Invector Plus tubes as simply Invector. What's the difference between the Invector Plus and Invector tubes? The Invector Plus are longer. Duh, they have different names for a reason! Like I said, IDIOTS!
Second Edit: Oh, wait a minute. Maybe it's not the retailers that are idiots. I just looked at the Browning packaging and it just says Invector. They are clearly Invector Plus tubes though. I have found on line product pics that clearly show the difference in length. I have found a retailer that has the Invector tubes listed as Standard and have ordered tubes from them. I also found several retailers that show product pics that have the Standard and Plus tubes mixed in with each other and call them ALL Invector. None of them are designated as Plus or Standard even though you can see a very clear difference in length in the same gauge. I'll update the results when I get the new tubes.
I was looking for a 410 for early season squirrel hunting and could not find anything I liked. However, while at Franklin's in Athens I saw this shotgun in 28ga. I had always wondered about the little 28 and had heard some good things about them from shotgun elitists. It was only $415.00, so it was less than the 870 pumps in 410 I was looking at. I figured "what the hell" and went ahead and got it. Good decision!
This is a very nice handling little shotgun and it's built like a tank. It takes interchangeable choke tubes and comes with a I. C. and Mod. tube. It does not have a barrel selector on the safety. It always shoots the under barrel first.
I did not have a chance to take it to the range to pattern it before my first hunt with it. I put the Mod tube in the under barrel for best range on my first shot. I got two shots that morning and dropped two squirrels that barely twitched. I was shooting Fed High Brass #6.
I wanted to get a variety of choke tubes. I especially wanted a Full for squirrel hunting. This is when things got a little interesting.
As best as I can tell Stoeger does not make choke tubes. Everything I found says that the Stoeger will take Browning Invector (not Invector Plus), Winchester and Mossberg tubes. GREAT! No problem getting tubes, but....
When I got the Browning tubes they fit the threads and matched the seating depth of the original tubes, but were much longer. They stick out the end of the barrels like extended tubes but are designed as flush mounts. Well OK, so they are a poor mans extended tube. Nothing wrong with that, right? Wrong.
I went hunting again with the new tubes (still had not patterned the gun) and had a very different experience. I killed five squirrels, but wounded three others that escaped. I REALLY HATE doing that. I ended up simply shooting the rest twice without pause to evaluate the results of the first shot. Something was definitely wrong!
I went to the range almost immediately from coming out of the woods. I patterned the gun with the Browning tubes I had been hunting with. Full choke in the under barrel and Mod in the upper.
The Full choke tube was VERY tight and that's a good thing. Unfortunately, it was also about eight inches low at 20 yards. My point of aim only had a couple of flyers in it. That's why I was getting the wounded, rather than cleanly killed, squirrels. The Mod tube was also pretty tight and about four inches low. That's why the double taps were working. It was the upper/Mod barrel that was killing them, not the under/Full barrel. One good thing is that both barrels were dead on horizontally. I had a suspicion this problem may be being caused by the unsupported flush mount tubes.
I switched back to the shorter tubes that came with the gun. I put the Mod in the under barrel and the I. C. in the upper. With the original tubes it was a different story. The under barrel was still low, but only about four inches and the upper was about two inches low. With the original tubes the barrels are regulated to within two inches of each other at 20 yards. That is perfectly acceptable and the issue with low POI was easily solved with a 3/16 inch thick Kick-Eez cheek pad.
This gun also shoots very tight. When I saw how tight the Mod tube was, I backed up to 35 yards as an experiment. No problem! Dead squirrel patter. Hell, dead TURKEY pattern. And that was with lead shot. Can't wait to see what it will do with a properly fitted full choke and a steel turkey load! Now all I have to do is figure out what the actual proper choke tubes are. Oh well, that's just a call to Stoeger on Monday.
The bottom line is that this is a VERY nice O/U shotgun for the money. The biggest issue with inexpensive O/U shotguns is barrel regulation. Most of them are poorly regulated and their just isn't much you can do about it. That's not a worry with the Stoeger Condor. I should have known. Stoeger is a subsidiary of Beretta after all.
Buy with confidence. Just make sure you get the right choke tubes to start with.
Edit: Well, I found out what the choke tube issue is. Most of the on line retailers are IDIOTS. They are refereeing to the Invector Plus tubes as simply Invector. What's the difference between the Invector Plus and Invector tubes? The Invector Plus are longer. Duh, they have different names for a reason! Like I said, IDIOTS!
Second Edit: Oh, wait a minute. Maybe it's not the retailers that are idiots. I just looked at the Browning packaging and it just says Invector. They are clearly Invector Plus tubes though. I have found on line product pics that clearly show the difference in length. I have found a retailer that has the Invector tubes listed as Standard and have ordered tubes from them. I also found several retailers that show product pics that have the Standard and Plus tubes mixed in with each other and call them ALL Invector. None of them are designated as Plus or Standard even though you can see a very clear difference in length in the same gauge. I'll update the results when I get the new tubes.
Last edited:
