All of the Beretta 686, 687's etc. are the same action. The only difference is fit and finish.

 

silverhawk is right. Not even much difference in fit & finish. Just differences in decoration, and you are right, wood quality goes up some.

 

The Silver Pigeon S has a gloss finish stock, the II, and III have an oil finish. The S has scroll engraving on the reciever, the II a pair of gamebird scenes, the III much finer detailed gamebird scenes. The III also upgrades to a gel-tec recoil pad and truglo sight. Check www.beretta.com for pictures of all of the Silver Pigeon series.

SPIII

 

I think the SPIII is the best deal. You get a much nicer piece of wood, Gel-Tek recoil pad, nicer engraving and Optima choke tubes all for about $100 more than the SPII! I have also noticed that the SPIII has more cast for a right handed shooter than the other models (This may be my imagination. I'm not sure if there is any true factory diff.)

 

As far as comparing the wood on the SP II or SP III it's hit and miss from what I have seen. Our local gunshop has a SP III that has wood to die for yet the last one I saw at another shop looked like the stock was made from a plain Jane 2x4 from Home Depot. Same for the SP II, I hand picked my SP II out of several others and it's very nice. Also I don't believe the SP III comes with Optima chokes unless you get the sporting model, field model comes with Mobile choke.

 

Grouse- Yeah I guess you are right about the wood. I am surprised that there would be much variation from SPIII to SPIII but there can be a night and day difference. I am glad I got lucky with the wood on mine because I have seen some since my last post that I would not have even considered.