I bought a Bronze 20.ga a couple weeks ago. To date about 400 rounds through it. Functions 100% with Gun clubs and my 1200 fps reloads with Intl Clays and Unique powder. The gun will still not function with Federal Top Gun target loads. They will not eject at all or get trapped in the ejection port. Trigger as others have posted is heavy(7+ lbs)and changing the spring is no help.

TriStar 28 ga Bronze in Saskatchewan Oct 2018 ... Shooting #6 Federal Steel shot. Not one misfire and plenty of dead ducks. No more cripples than a 12 bore... Gun is awesome. I freakin love the gun. No complaints here. Shoots EVERYTHING I fed it too. I reload all my 28 ga skeet loads and I have fed this gun some "light powder drop" loads and it cycles them fine. I can see a bit of a difference between this gun and a Beretta A400 but not enough to pay $700 xtra bucks for...I love my Turkish feather and skeet duster:)

Where do you find steel or no tox 28 gage shells?

I just received my 20 gauge. Disassembled, wiped everything off, CLP to the piston and mag tube and light synthetic oil to everything else.

First shots will be tomorrow. Something to look forward to.
Also ordered the "trigger pull lightening" spring. Installing that is one more thing to look forward to.

My 20 gage Bronze will not hold the weight of the gun without firing. I have no trigger gage. I guess my trigger is ok as it never really bothered me but lots do seem to think too heavy. The gun weighs around 6.5 pounds. So can you support the full weight of the gun without tripping the hammer?

Rogerssportinggoods.com has all the 28 gauge non tox

No, my trigger pull is heavy enough that it is unacceptable.
I own over 15 shotguns that I shoot and this one is by far the heaviest to pull. I don't have a pull gauge, but don't need one. Looking forward to the MCARBO spring, and seeing how much difference it makes.

Took the Viper G2 out for a few rounds today. Here in central Ohio it is beautiful, 45 degrees when we shot. I put 60 rounds through it. A mixture of the steel at 1425, a few of the Federals at 1165 and mostly some Gun Clubs at 1200. I loaded two of the 1165 in and I had the first (thus far only) failure: not enough oomph to feed the round. That was my 20th round (number 170 overall) before I had any sort of hiccup. After that I loaded either a Gun Club or one of the steel shot and never had another issue.

It is not recommended that you use rounds with that low of fps and normally I would not. And, previously they had cycled through with no issues. Gun Club is usually my 20 gauge round of choice and I have had no issues with those. This gun may be finicky. My daughter's 1100 with thousands and thousands of rounds through it will cycle Winchester cheaper loads about 70% of the time. You put Federal, Remington, Fiocchi through it and it never stops. The 1165 may be too little for the gun.

That is just 210 rounds with the one and only failure coming on a "not recommended" light load at round number 170. 40 more rounds after it with no problems. I will continue to report. I should start to shoot the gun much more now that the weather is maybe getting better. Some of the rounds today were high house 4 with a Light Mod choke and 7 or 8 shot. Just ground the targets. Little more open choke and I probably would not have dropped the couple I did.

Thus far I have to say I have no complaints. I had my first issue with my Beretta Outlander Sporting at a similar round count (have had two failures with it so far) so I am not going to complain. I like the gun and plan to buy the .410 soon.

I put another 50 rounds through the gun this morning. Remington Gun Club at 1200 fps.
Flawless performance. Loaded two and three shells at a time. One time I loaded five. There were no hiccups or hesitations on the part of the gun. Beautiful sunny day. No wind. 36 degrees. I really like this gun.

I am planning to buy the red sporting youth version for my 11 year old daughter to use for trap shooting. My question is how hard is the bolt to pull back and how stiff is the bolt release. I have seen lots of kids on our youth team struggle with both. I had planned to put her straight into an A400 or 391 12ga. but she is just not strong enough to hold mine up. I hate to spend $1200+ on a 20ga. for her to shoot a couple of years.

Thanks,
Craig

The bolt is easy to pull back. The bolt tealease button is very hard to push. I understand on the 12 gauge model they have both the oversized bolt handle and bolt release button which makes function easier. You might call Tristar and ask if those are available on the youth model.

Thanks for the response. The over sized handle and release are included in the Viper G2 sporting 20. I just wondered how much they help. I like the Briley release levers but I know they dont make one for the the Tristars.

I would assume it would help quite a bit because you will actually be spreading the force over a wider area. Especially a smaller thumb like your daughter's is. She could actually apply the pad of her thumb where it joins her wrist if she had to.

The more times you depress it, the easier it gets. Dad could help by pressing it a couple hundred times hard. It makes a world of difference.

I called tried star because I couldn't find the lop listed anywhere. They told me it was 13" that is about and inch too long. I read somewhere that it has a 1" pad. I was thinking I could grind down a .75" kick ezz pad. Any chance I could shave a little off of the length of the stock?

Not sure how that would work with the synthetic stock. Most of those are hollow inside and you might do some damage to the holes where the screws for the butt pad are attached. Or, the stock could maybe split. I'm not sure I would go that route.

I cut down the stock on my wife's Savage 110 .243, which eliminated the 'meat' to screw a pad to. I took a piece of wood about 1" thick, shaped it to fit the opening, then epoxied it into place, screwed the pad to the wood. No issues in 10 years.

Yes, but on a semi-auto shotgun, if you should later need to gain access to the buttstock area such as to service or replace a recoil spring or perhaps to remove the buttstock to change the cast/drop shims, you're screwed if you've epoxied the wood to the synthetic stock.

Just requires another saw cut.

You're right of course, wasn't thinking of the difference between a bolt rifle and a shotgun butt.

The idea of a wood plug in the cutoff synthetic stock is a good one if you had a way to remove it if you needed to. I suppose that instead of epoxying it in place, you could put some screws through the stock to hold it in place, but that would look like crap and you might scratch or cut yourself on the screw heads.

Or you might put a bunch of little flathead nails through the stock into the wood plug. Again, it wouldn't look very good, but probably would work OK.