I am fairly new to skeet myself. I had done a lot of research and fired several guns at my local range.
I had decided absolutely on a Benelli Montefeltro. I fired it several times at the range with a pal who has one.The thing felt and pointed great. It is about 900 if you look around.
The thing is with my pal telling me I was shouldering it correct I was getting a pretty bad ache firing 50 to 100 shells. Skeet is not like hunting. You fire a fair amount in a session.
So I bought some extra light loads. The perfect condition, perfect maintained, action smooth as butter benelli failed to properly cycle about one out of three. My pal was shocked but he had never used extra light
7/8ths 9 shot rounds in it.
That day I guy was there with a Baretta a300. This is baretta's US made bottom of the line auto. It did not look as beautiful as the benelli, nor feel as svelte light and pointable, action felt grittier, but it fired the light loads without a hiccup.
Moreover when I compared normal target loads between the two, the baretta a300 had quite noticeably lower recoil. I mean quite significant.
The fact that I am 50 and don't want to kill my shoulder, and my wife is small framed and I would like her to enjoy it too made me go with the baretta 300. We are both having fun with it. My shoulder is a bit sore after 100 rounds, but I know with a pump or initial it would be worse
Your considerations may be different. If I was 25 I would have gotten the benelli. As far as price, yes you can go with a pump, but I would say do that if you already own or want a pump for other reasons. Spending 700 (baretta) or 900 benelli is not really much for getting a semi auto which IMHO is more enjoyable with skeet.
My advice:
- consider recoil. even if you learn to shoulder perfectly, gas is definitely way less recoil than inertial. On top of that, gas seems to work better with lighter commercial target rounds.
- maintainance. The gas seems to be a bit more maintenance. I would not consider the takedown of the a300 to be a complete that bad, but it definitely gets fouled and is not as simple as other guns.