Benelli’s New 3-inch-chambered 28-gauge Super Black Eagle 3 brings with it an unmistakeable air of confidence to its owner.
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Benelli’s new 3-inch-chambered 28-gauge Super Black Eagle 3 semi-auto shotgun combines professional-level performance with a venerable chambering using new loads enhanced for modern hunting.
Benelli’s new 3-inch-chambered 28-gauge Super Black Eagle 3 was ideal for hunting ducks in flooded timber.
What gun you bring to hunting camp says a lot about you. For example, show up in a goose pit with a Benelli Super Black Eagle 12-gauge and everyone in the pit knows you’re not there to mess around—you’re there to kill geese—pure and simple. Similarly, show up for an upland bird hunt with a 28-gauge and you exude an unmistakable air of confidence.
But what if you combined the legendary performance of a Super Black Eagle with the aura of the 28-gauge chambering, and then enhanced the performance of that chambering by partnering with premium shotshell manufacturers to bring new 3-inch 28-gauge shells to market?
New 3-inch 28-gauge loads opens up a whole new world of shotgunning.
That’s exactly what Benelli recently did with the introduction of the Super Black Eagle 3 28-gauge 3-inch chambered shotgun. This new lighter-weight, faster-handling package is a modern synthetic duck gun ideally suited for situations such as decoyed birds in flooded timber.
While this 28-gauge works reliably with standard 2 3/4-inch shotshells, hunters taking advantage of this new class of 3-inch loads from premier ammunition brands can confidently use a 28-gauge in ways that haven’t been possible. This new diversity opens up several new 28-gauge field opportunities in a single platform that is lighter, faster and easily adaptable to a broad range of hunting environments.
Sporting Classics reached out to local waterfowler and retriever trainer Clayton Durst for his take on the new gun and shell combo, as Durst has been using a 28-gauge on ducks for the past couple of years, finding the 12-gauge “somewhat too much” to kill ducks.
“I was seeing a lot of birds destroyed by a 12-gauge after shooting them at close range,” he explained. “The main goal should be to harvest the bird to eat and a 12-gauge would go beyond killing them sometimes, especially the wood ducks that are mainly what we kill in South Carolina.”
Durst tried the new SBE3 using both steel shot and Fiocchi’s new 3-inch Golden Waterfowl bismuth loads locally in flooded timber and over fields in Arkansas. “For the type of local duck hunting I normally do, the gun is perfect. It does not limit me at all,” he said. “Taking this gun to Arkansas and shooting bigger birds and in fields had its challenges. In late season hunting the birds don’t decoy as well. For the birds that did what they were supposed to do, the gun was perfect. I shot using the improved modified choke with steel and it did very well. The gun does not come with a factory full choke for steel, and this is where it got challenging for birds at more than 40 yards. With the bismuth loads though, the long shots were no problem.”
These turkey loads fired at 20, 30 and 40 yards (left to right) show a lot of potential for the Super Black Eagle 3 28-gauge as a turkey gun.
One of the most notable qualities of the new SBE3 28-gauge is its weight, or lack of. At less than 5.5 pounds, it is the lightest and smallest SBE3 ever produced. For Durst, that nimbleness made it easy to take rapid doubles noting that he had a few mallards “decoy very well” and with the gun being so light it was “easy to transition after shooting one bird to pick up the next” adding that “when they decoyed like they are supposed to, doubles were no problem.”
Benelli’s Super Black Eagle 3 28-gauge hammered the ducks in flooded timber.
The light weight also appealed to him from an efficiency standpoint. “When waterfowling, especially if you have a dog, there’s a lot of stuff you have to take with you,” he explained. “It was just so easy to sling this gun over my shoulder. And a couple of boxes of 28-gauge shells takes up as much space as a single box of 12-gauge.”
Another thing helping Durst make those doubles was how well this gun handles recoil. “I mean, these are 3-inch magnum shells,” he exclaimed, “and you wouldn’t know it by shooting them!” That lower recoil isn’t just a function of being a smaller gauge shell, either, there’s also Benelli’s Comfort Tech 3 stock and Inertia-Driven System contributing to recoil reduction. That system is also known for increased cycling reliability over a range of light and heavy loads and helps keep the system super clean.
Overall, Durst considered the SBE3 3-inch 28-gauge a “warrior” when it comes to duck hunting. “It’s very smooth and shoots in any conditions. Even in the rain and tough water, when the gun sees these conditions it never seems to fail you. There was not a single problem at all, he emphasized. “That is the best part and biggest blessing when waterfowl hunting. Problems become stress and when you have a dog and birds involved it becomes a lot, so your gun needs to be the last thing you worry about and I had no concerns or problems at all.”
Specs
Maker: Benelli USA
Model: Super Black Eagle 3
Finish: Black anodized
Chambering: 28-gauge, 3-inch chamber
Operating System: Inertia
Magazine: Tubular, 2+1 capacity
Barrel: Crio-treated 26, 28 inches
Overall Length: 49 1/2 inches
Weight: 5.5 pounds
Chokes: Crio treated cylinder, improved modified, full (flush); Crio treated improved cylinder, modified (extended)
Sight: Red bar front
Stock: Black synthetic, Comfort Tech 3; Length of pull, 14 3/8 inches; Drop at heel, 2 1/8 inches; Drop at Comb, 1 3/8 inches
Other: Drop and cast shim kit, hard plastic case, choke tube case, choke tube wrench, oversized bolt handle, oversized safety, easy locking bolt system, easy loading system
MSRP: $1,899
