Weatherby Orion 20-Gauge Side-By-Side Shotgun

A competent side-by-side shotgun retailing for under $1,000 sounds as unlikely and unattainable as a sub-6-pound elk rifle that shoots consistently. But Weatherby has accomplished the unexpected with its new Turkish-made Orion that hammers birds and has just enough style that you don’t have to feel inadequate around Beretta- and Orvis-equipped wingshooters.

Let’s be clear: The Orion isn’t some undiscovered heir to elegance. Instead, it’s an unadorned workaday side-by-side that digests a wide range of payloads, is at home on the marsh as in the uplands, and that you won’t feel bad when you scratch and ding. In other words, it’s a side-by-side for the rest of us.

I spent most of last fall with the 20-gauge version of the new platform and will detail my experiences below. For starters, you should know this is hardly Weatherby’s first dalliance with foreign-sourced shotguns. It’s not even Weatherby’s first side-by-side.

The company, which relocated from California’s Central Coast to Sheridan, Wyoming, a few years ago, sourced its original Orion side-by-side from Spain. That model, which was in the company’s offerings for about 20 years, was discontinued in 2003, and Weatherby later collaborated with Fausti to produce the Athena D’Italia, which as its name suggests was made in Italy. But that venture fizzled out a few years ago, meaning that while Weatherby’s over-and-under Orion has chugged along, it hasn’t had a side-by-side in its catalog since well before its move to Wyoming.

The latest Orion side-by-side, introduced last fall, is being produced by mid-sized Turkish shotgun manufacturer Yildiz, according to Kyle Killen, Weatherby’s international sales manager and manager for the new shotgun project. You might know Yildiz as the producer of Academy Sports’ line of very good and very affordable shotguns. But Yildiz wasn’t satisfied with being known as a cheap shotgun provider and wanted to be associated with a more premium brand. The company worked with Weatherby to produce a gun that has appealing style and performance notes while still retailing for right around $1,000.

Killen says the guiding principle for Weatherby’s project was to produce “a great gun that was affordable to a blue-collar guy.”

He noted that the process of producing a price-point side-by-side is one of deciding which features to keep, and which ones to ditch.

“Price does affect things to a large extent,” says Killen. “As we were sourcing this gun, inflation was rampant and we weren’t sure where we’d need to land for a price point, so there were a lot of guesses involved with features and pricing. We could have thrown ejectors on it, or we could have stuck with extractors, which we did. We could have engraved the receivers, or traded that [metal] work for better wood. We could have gone with a super-cheap build, but then you see problems with barrel regulation.”

Killen said he was guided by the workaday performance aesthetics of a previous generation of attainable side-by-side shotguns, notably Winchester’s Model 21, produced from 1931 through 1959 with an unadorned style but honest field chops.

“I wanted to build a gun with a clean receiver like that Model 21,” says Killen. “Workhorse guns that had deep bluing on the receiver. It turns out, when you consider modern manufacturing techniques, that keeping the scroll work to a minimum means we can put that cost into better wood. Besides, even a little bit of scroll work would be laser-dot, and it wouldn’t look that great.”

The new Weatherby Orion has relatively plain blued metal, but decent wood for the price. Most models have grade II or better sticks, giving the gun a bit more figure than you’d expect on a price-point side-by-side. Other appealing features include a long tang trigger guard, indexed screws, a manual tang safety, extractors and a brass bead at the end of a swamped rib that sits in a vale created by the parallel barrels. The Orion ships with five extended choke tubes and has double triggers and a splinter forend, 28-inch barrels and an oiled English stock. A modified round-body box lock design, it weighs 6 pounds, 12 ounces.

Its competitors include the Tristar Bristol, a Turkish-made side-by-side that retails for about $1,200 and features a case-colored receiver, English stock, five chokes and a single selectable trigger with ejectors. Stoeger has its Uplander, available in 12, 20, 28, and .410 bore. That gun, with forgettable wood and fairly unadorned metal work, retails for right around $500. The higher-grade Uplander Supreme retails for about $600.

The best contemporary competitor to the Orion is CZ’s Bobwhite G2, which is now discontinued and retails for right around $1,200. If you want to find the mix of performance and style that the Orion brings to the market, you have to jump to about $3,000 and look hard at off-beat European brands.

If I have a stylistic complaint, it’s the extended choke tubes, with a (to my eye) off-brand blue accent. But Killen notes that the tubes, machined by Yildiz but also available in aftermarket models from Briley, are an intentional performance feature. The extended tubes allow better patterning of steel shot, says Killen, who has heard from a fair number of side-by-side purists who have complained about the 7/8-inch protrusions.

“We tested both flush and extended choke tubes extensively, and noted that harder, more elastic steel shot patterned noticeably better with those extended tubes because they have a half-inch more parallel constriction compared to internal tubes,” says Killen. “Overall, it was important to me to embrace the traditions of classic side-by-sides, but the one tradition we had to go away from was the extended choke tubes. We’re seeing a lot more public refuges and wildlife management areas shifting to non-toxic, even for upland hunting. We wanted to build a future-proof gun that could handle any load in any situation with any choke constriction.”

My own testing verified this proposition. I didn’t put the entire universe of choke/barrel/payload combinations through my gun, rather stuck with the combinations I used most of the time in the field. That was an I/M choke in the left barrel and a Modified choke in the right barrel. I patterned Prairie Storm #5, HeviShot’s HEVI-Bismuth #5, Winchester’s excellent Bismuth #4 and Winchester’s new 1-ounce, #5 Diamond Grade load through both barrels and both mid-constriction chokes. I then shot the same combination of barrel and choke with Winchester’s Xpert HV #4 steel. I considered shooting #1 shot, since I had used that shot size for some of my duck hunting, but stuck with a load (the #3 steel) that easily covers both ducks over decoys and upland birds.=

The lead and bismuth loads averaged 83 percent patterning (the percentage of total pellets in each given load divided by the actual impacts in a 30-inch circle) in the I/C choke while the steel loads patterned at about 78 percent. Given the forgiveness of lead and soft-as-lead projectiles in patterning tests, that’s pretty equivalent results.

In the Modified choke-and-barrel combination, the lead-and-bismuth loads patterned at 85 percent while the steel load patterned at 83.5 percent, again pretty equivalent and a good testament to the excellent performance of those unfortunate extended chokes.

My final assessment: The tubes are an important concession to, as Killen says, future-proof the gun, making it as useful shooting budget steel loads on the marsh as it is killing long-range roosters with high-end shotshells.

In The Field

I spent more time in the uplands with the Orion than I honestly expected. I started with shirt-sleeve doves, then transitioned into the long, hot hikes for prairie grouse before I changed things up with early season ducks. Finally, I spent many satisfying weekends chasing late-season roosters.

I had only one malfunction, and it was entirely my fault. I was hunting public-land pheasants in an area that gets hammered enough that roosters tend to flush long. I had some stiff payloads in the barrels: Winchester’s Super Pheasant. I’m not sure if you’ve shot that load in a lightish gun, but the 1 1/4-ounce of #4 scooting at about 1,250 fps kills on both ends. A long-tailed rooster rocketed out of the cattails, I swung through and touched off the front trigger. What happened, though, was a blast that almost put me on my butt. Both barrels fired nearly simultaneously. The heavy recoil pushed my finger off the front trigger onto the back trigger. After that, I tended to go with a lighter load in the first barrel, then the heavy bird-dumper for the second shot.

The front trigger, incidentally, has a 14-3/4-inch length of pull. The rear trigger is a full inch shorter. Both fit my hands and LOP pretty well, though I noticed in the late season, when I had heavy clothes on, I had to consciously reach for the front trigger.

The 28-inch barrels feel longer, maybe because of the choke tubes or maybe because the balance is slightly ahead of the receiver. But that length made it an ace at long crossing shots, even if it wasn’t at its best for close-in snap shooting, situations like quail hunting where I’d want a 26-inch-barreled shotgun, anyway.

I loaned the Weatherby to friends and my kids, all of whom shot it adequately. It wore the indignities of late-season pheasant hunting, with its briars and snow, in stride without marring either metal or wood. It shot steel, lead, bismuth, HeviShot’s metallurgical mixes, and both light and heavy field loads without complaint.

My conclusion, once I finally cased the Orion after a long and satisfying season, was that it’s a capable, affordable and durable shotgun. It’s available in gauge-specific frames in 12, 20, and .410 bore and it represents an excellent value. I hope it remains in Weatherby’s catalog for years to come.

Specs

• Gauge: 20 gauge, 3-inch chambers
• Other Available Gauges: 12 gauge and .410 bore
• Action: Round-body boxlock and shell extractors
• Stock: Straight English stock with splinter forend, oil finish, slight cast off
• Barrel: 28-inch monoblock with extended choke tubes: Skeet, IC, Mod, IM, Full
• Triggers: Mechanical double triggers; front trigger fires right barrel
• Safety: Ambidextrous tang
• Length of Pull: 13.75 inches to rear trigger, 14.75 inches to front trigger
• Drop at Comb: 1.5 inches
• Drop at Heel: 2.375 inches
• Overall Length: 46 inches
• Weight: 6 pounds, 12 ounces
• Price: $1,099

Pros

• Good handling
• Decent wood
• Versatile choke combination
• Configured for both waterfowl and upland hunting
• Reliable mechanical double triggers
• Durable design
• Classic shotgun styling
• Excellent value

Cons

• Forgettable cosmetics
• Safety hard to deploy with gloves