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SHOT week is our biggest traffic week of the year. Everyone wants to see what’s new and cool. Who wouldn’t? But a frequent bitch complaint we get crops up when we post news of a new high end gun. “Oh great…another gun I can’t afford,” is an oft-heard refrain. Well here’s a new O/U that will take you a lot less time to save your pennies for. Weatherby’s Orion I . . .

is a classic, traditional field gun that would be tons o’ fun for clays too. The Turkish-made smoothbore comes in 26- and 28-inch barrel lengths, has a nicely figured walnut stock and forend and clean crisp checkering. All for an MSRP of $1099. So there you go. A quality over/under you won’t have to donate a kidney to take home.

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31 COMMENTS

  1. That is flat out beautiful. I’ve been a Weatherby fan for years. Got a couple of their rifles, .338 and 300WM and love them. I’ll have to see if I can get this on in the house without the wife knowing. Just kidding. Thanks for the post.

  2. I see the comments section is still being…interesting. It attempted to log me in as a “Bontai Joe” rather than as myself, General Zod. Let’s see if it changes my identity when I hit “Post”…

  5. “All for an MSRP of $1099. So there you go. A quality over/under you won’t have to donate a kidney to take home.”

    You must be making more than me. Or have less kids. Or be less in school, haha. That’s still remarkably cheap, though. For the gun.

  7. So much Nope. Unless that picture is unfairly portraying that shotgun that’s way too much. It looks like it was crafted by an actual turkey. The wood doesn’t fit and the receiver/barrel matchup is even worse. And that’s on their show gun. The ultra-high gloss finish? Major Bleh. You can get an identical CZ for $300 less.

  8. I want to shoot sporting clays and five stand. But the internet says I need a $1000 over under or semi auto. I just want to use a pump. Can I?

    • You will never catch the simultaneous doubles with a pump. Look at used guns or Roger Red Label.. A Stoger Competition if you can find one is under $1000 and has some nice features will help you get started. If you are not sure what you want, go to a range and rent. They will have O/U and automatics.

    • You can easily shoot doubles with a pump. I do it routinely. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. practice with your system whatever it is, have fun!

    • Yes, you can.

      The place where using a pump gets you dirty looks is in trap, where if you eject your shell into the stand to your right, people get annoyed. An Ithica 37 pump gun solves this problem, as does tuning the ejector on a pump gun to drop your shell at your feel.

      On semi-autos, some people put a rubber band around the ejection port, or they use a shell catcher that restricts the ejection of the shell and hangs it up in the port.

      I’ve shot sporting clays with a pump gun, an O/U, a semi-auto. They all work. No one is standing to your right in sporting clays, so if your gun auto-ejects, no big deal.

    • You sure can. I shoot clays with a standard M500 with a 20″ barrel. Its a standard smoothebore too. And Ive gotten good enough with it to shoot 3 out of the sky at a time. Anytime any one tells you, “you cant”- you show em how its done.

  9. I’d like to see this gun in person, out of curiosity.

    I recently shopped the low end of the over-under market. The Turkish guns I handled all felt like imitations of real guns. They seemed like somebody took a Beretta or Browning and handed it to some gun maker in Turkey (Huglu, mostly) and said “Make something that looks like this for under $500 U.S. cost to me. Cut whatever corners you have to.”

    I’m guessing the Turkish guns function well enough, but the fit and finish were well below the base model Berettas and Brownings (and they should be based on price). Maybe this one is different. But from what I saw, Beretta and Browning don’t seem to be putting much fluff in the prices of their base models.

    Also, while it’s hard to tell from the pictures, the wood on that gun looks straight-grained rather than figured. I’d be real surprised to see figured walnut at this price.

    • In the O/U or SxS gun market, yes, $1K is a cheap gun.

      People who think that a double-barreled shotgun can be made competently to sell at pump gun prices really don’t know what is inside a double-barrel shotgun.

      Starting with the obvious “two barrels.”

  13. Or, you could get a CZ branded one and have a Turkish O/U for even less money. Seriously, CZ has 6 Turkish made O/U lines that have an MSRP less than this.

  14. TT got it right. Spend another $500-$600 and get a proven, durable, reliable OU like a Browning Citori or a Beretta 686. You’ll never regret avoiding a cheap OU; dozens of years and tens of thousands of rounds later you’ll realize a problem free quality gun is cheaper to own in the long run and much more of a joy to shoot.

  15. Stoeger, Mossberg/Maverick, TriStar and Emperor all make Over Unders in the $400ish range, sometimes they come up on sale for less than $350. The Mossy is the only one that doesn’t come with wood furniture.

    • Those might be ok choices for someone who is only going to shoot a few boxes of shells each year, but they won’t stand up to a few thousand rounds per year. Fine for occasional field use, but not the best choice for high volume clay target shooters. If all I ever used a shotgun for was dove, quail and the occasional duck I’d be perfectly happy with my 1970’s era Mossberg 500.

    • I’ve seen those guns. They might suffice for cowboy action shooters, or people who just want to shoot a few hundred rounds per year. They won’t hold up to the kind of shooting that trap and clays shooters do – thousands upon thousands of rounds per year. The above gun might not either. The outsides of the low-end guns have very modest finishing on them. The insides are sometimes as rough as a cob.

      Lots of people don’t understand is why serious shooters of clay sports pay up $3 to $5K for a O/U gun. Then again, most of those people have never shot at even a state-level trap shoot. They’ve probably never been in a trap league at their local club. They shoot a few hundred rounds per year, tops.

      A serious trap shooter shoots in one day what the price-befuddled shooter shoots in a year – or more. I’ve been at trap shoots where most of the shooters shot 250 rounds in a day, and then the two top-scoring shooters ended up shooting nearly 1,000 rounds (all combined) that day.

      I’ve shot trap on some days with a Browning O/U, some other days with an old Fox Sterlingworth SxS, others with an old Parker VH. The older SxS guns work just as well as the newer guns, but the differences between a field and a competition/sports gun become painfully apparent after about 50 rounds, ie, one round of doubles. For starters, the forearm starts to bleed heat through, or the splinter foreends have so little wood on them that it is only a matter of time before I burn my fingers by touching the barrels. Another issue will be the fit and recoil delivery – the Sterlingworth and Parker shoot well for the first 25 rounds, but after 250 rounds in a day, I’m a hurting pup. They don’t even have a rubber recoil pad – they had only a bakelite or phenolic butt plate. The Browning has a rubber pad, but after 250+ rounds, I’m starting to feel the fatigue of absorbing the recoil. By 500 or so rounds through the Browning, I feel as tho I’m done for the weekend.

      When people have loaned me high-end guns (as I’m shopping for one in the $5K+ range), I can shoot a round of doubles and barely notice the recoil. The fit and recoil issues are greatly improved.

      • If somebody shoots trap, they’re already in a special use category. Dropping thousands of dollars comes with the territory. But anyone else, why spend the $$$?

        Or for that matter, why not drop $400 on a Turkish import every 2 or 3 years (or $600 on a Tristar with a 5 year warranty), rather than $3-5K all at once? It would take 7.5 years for the cheap Turk gun(s) to come to the same price as a $3K shottie, at which point I would guess it would need to be replaced anyway (14-16K rounds), whereas worst case $1200 spread over 5 years would get me 2 Tristars. Buy from Davidson’s and it comes with a lifetime warranty.

        I admit it, I’m a cheap bastard.

  17. I enjoy shooting spotting clays with my Weatherby Orion as much or more than I do with my Browning Citori. It probably will not stand up as long but, it fits nicely, shoots great, looks very nice and it costs much less than the others. May have to replace sooner but, mine is still tight and shooting well after many rounds.

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