Fausti’s perfectly balanced Class SLX 20-gauge is the ideal choice for everything from doves to pheasants.
Big-game hunting pulls us toward the wild, the unknown, the hoped for, the adventure. But it’s limited: short seasons, single tags… if you can draw a tag at all. And then bang. One and done. And that’s why I love bird hunting, and 20-gauge shotguns.
Ruffed grouse and woodcock. Sharptails and prairie chickens. Pheasants and quail. Blue grouse, ptarmigan, chukar . . . nearly twenty species of upland game birds in North American alone lure us into wild country from cactus deserts to hardwood forests, from coastal swamps to Arctic mountains, where we can hunt daily and shoot often over a span of months, not days. Bag limits for some species are as high as fifteen per day. And for this, you need a balanced, fitted, smooth-handling, and sweet-swinging shotgun like the Fausti Class SLX 20-gauge.
The Class SLX is a slim, beautifully balanced over/under shotgun with lovely lines to match the glory of autumn. From its nicely figured, oil-polished walnut stock to its swirling case-colored receiver inlaid with evocative gold pheasants and grouse, this 6.2-pound smoothbore virtually demands to be taken afield. And when it is, the user invariably demands another round. Day after day, field after field, hike after hike, shot after shot, the intoxicating mix of gun and birds fills the autumn days with discovery and joy.
Such is the magic of upland hunting. But there is a prosaic side, a mechanical utility that contributes to the simple application of a gun like this one. The heart of this mechanism is a strong boxlock action augmented by false sideplates, a canvas for the gun’s swirling case-colored finish and gold inlaid pheasants and grouse. This same case-colored finish wraps the rest of the action, including the sculpted breech, tang lever, and action bar, where yet another gold grouse takes wing.
Light, fine scroll engraving adds texture for a rich overall look. The textured effect is slightly marred, to my eye, by a gloss-blued trigger bow. I suspect this was done to showcase Fausti’s newly adopted logo inlaid on it on gold, a logo consisting of mirrored images of a stylized F that can also be seen as stag antlers.
In its defense, the shiny blued trigger bow is echoed in the deeply blued, 28-inch barrels with 3-inch chambers and capped with flush fit choke tubes, five to the set. A matte stippled, raised rib guides the shooter’s eye subconsciously to the targets. All of this metal is fitted to a AA walnut stock highlighted with 18-line checkering on the rounded pistol grip panels and wrapping around what Fausti calls a splinter fore-end.
The muscle in this machine is Fausti’s Four Locks locking system machined from a solid bar of steel. In addition to the usual tapered under-lug lock up, which compensates for wear over time, there are secondary lugs protruding from each lower side of the action walls. These engage matching recesses in the barrels’ monoblock. This setup should handily minimize torque working to tear the breech from the face with each shot.
The fore-end iron is attached to the barrels via the familiar, pull-down Deeley and Edge lever. It and its frame are lightly engraved. Pushing the tang lever and hinging the barrels down activates the selective ejectors and cocks any fired barrel. The barrel selector for the single trigger is in the tang safety. Length of pull is 14.5 inches, ending in a thin, black, stippled, rubber butt pad with a bit of flex in its center, more than sufficient to soften the slight blow of a 20-gauge.
More noticeable than all these details is the general look and feel of this gun. It’s slim, trim, light, and lively thanks in no small part to a properly scaled action and sensibly, even artistically sculpted stock lines. In the uplands, this 20-gauge carries easily, mounts quickly, and paints a bird’s flight path before the shooter consciously considers it. Flush, swing, bang, done—it happens instinctively, hardly without realizing 6.2 pounds and 45 inches of walnut and steel were even part of the operation. That, in the final analysis, describes the perfect upland shotgun.
So, once the elk is wrapped and frozen, the deer hung and aging, I can whistle up the setter and indulge day after golden autumn day walking the uplands where coveys and singles await to astonish and thrill me. And I’ll carry a Fausti wand that somehow reaches out to snare them smoothly and elegantly, every time.
