Hunting gobblers in the shadow of Devils Tower with the newly updated Benelli M2 Field.
One of the coolest things about hunting on the ranches near Carlile in northeastern Wyoming is the way you are treated to frequent and unexpected views of the region’s most famous monolith. Almost every time you top a hill or come around a curve on a gravel road, you’ll see, looming on the horizon, the iconic form of Devils Tower, a magnificent rock formation made famous in the 1977 sci-fi classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
The famous rock aside, the landscape in this section of the Black Hills is exceptionally beautiful, with rolling, grassy hills, scattered trees, and an abundance of antelope, mule deer, whitetails, and Merriam’s turkeys. This spring, I was lured there not by mysterious aliens, but just as irresistibly, by the siren song of a big gobbler.
The other reason for the trip was to test out Benelli’s newly updated M2 Field shotgun. For nearly twenty years, the M2 Field has been considered the reliable workhorse of Benelli’s semi-auto shotgun stable. Continuing the equine analogy, the company is billing the updated M2 Field—introduced in 2023–as “workhorse rugged with thoroughbred speed.”
The M2 Field is offered in numerous configurations, including 12- and 20-gauge versions with 24-, 26-, and 28-inch barrel lengths and 2 3/4- and 3-inch chambers. Finish options include black synthetic, Mossy Oak Bottomland, Gore Optifade Waterfowl Timber, and Realtree Max-7 across both the standard and compact models.
The major changes to the updated M2 Field involve the stock and bolt. The fore-end and receiver are sleeker, with a longer grip surface on the fore-end. The buttstock has an extended AirTouch surface behind the pistol grip for better grip with wet or gloved hands.
The new bolt design is supposed to be smoother, quieter, and stronger than the old one—I can’t speak to that, but I will say that my gun cycled flawlessly and the action seemed much quieter than other semiauto shotguns I’ve used. The bolt release has been changed from a conventional round button to one with a longer bar shape that is easy to find and quick to manipulate, even with gloves on.
Benelli puts a lot of thought into recoil reduction, which is one reason I’m a fan of their shotguns. The updated M2 has their new Micro Cell recoil pad, which works in conjunction with a recoil tube and stainless-steel spring inside the stock that significantly reduces felt recoil. You can buy the recoil pads in varying widths to adjust the length of pull.
This is an inertia-driven shotgun, designed to handle a wide range of loads from light field loads to heavy payloads for turkeys and geese. The system is strong and made with durable steel locking lugs on a rotating bolt head.
The gun I hunted with was the 20-gauge version of the M2 in black synthetic with a 24-inch barrel, kitted out with an Aimpoint Acro S2 reflex red dot optic. I had a chance to shoot it shortly after arriving at the lodge at Trophy Ridge Outfitters; outfitter Ralph Dampman has a nice shooting bench and target frames out back of his lodge, and we tacked up turkey-head targets for patterning the guns at thirty yards.
The M2 utilizes Benelli’s Crio System barrels. The company says that cryogenically treating a barrel creates a smoother bore surface that patterns better (13.2 percent more pellets on target) and stays cleaner longer. All I can say is that I was impressed with the tight patterns I shot off the bench.
Speaking of tight patterns, I loaded the M2 with Fiocchi’s Golden Turkey TSS load. Nearly 70 percent denser than lead, tungsten shot has revolutionized the shotgun world in recent years. It’s expensive, but since once you pattern your gun you’ll likely only use one shot on a gobbler, a box or two of high-performance tungsten loads are a sensible investment for a turkey hunter.
I don’t have a lot of experience with red-dot sights, but I liked the Aimpoint Acro S-2 and found it very easy to use. Specifically designed to mount on ventilated shotgun ribs (interchangeable base plates accommodate most rib sizes), it is small, light, sleek, and doesn’t get in the way. When you mount the gun, there’s a clear field of view through it with both eyes open, and the large 9-MOA dot is quick and easy to center on the target. It has ten different intensity settings that you can easily adjust with a push of a button, which was a useful feature since our hunting days started well before dawn and continued through the bright sunlight of midday.
A great thing about the Acro S-2 is you don’t have to worry about turning it off. Aimpoint says it can operate for 50,000 hours on a single CR2032 battery. I left mine on for the entire three days of hunting, including overnight, with no problems.
Northeastern Wyoming was having a cold spring, and unfortunately the turkeys weren’t cooperating, so I spent a lot of time hoofing around the countryside and setting up in different spots to call. At just 5.8 pounds, the M2 Field was a delight to carry over miles of hiking in the rolling country. During three days of hunting I got a lot of experience handling the gun and working the bolt release, finding it fast and easy to load and unload, even in the frigid predawn darkness with gloves on.
There is no shortage of turkeys in this region, and I had numerous encounters with gobblers, but they none of them ever quite moved into a position where I could close the deal. On the first morning, I had the gun trained in the direction of a gobbler that needed to take a couple more steps to give me a clear shot—but he turned and went the other way. On day two, we had a gobbler with a flock of hens nearly in range, but a barbed-wire fence stood between us, and they declined to cross it.
On the last morning, my guide and I figured we had a foolproof plan. We set up a couple hundred yards from a roost tree in a pop-up blind placed where a big field pinched down into a funnel. We had noticed that the turkeys in the roost tree had been flying down and heading this way, so we figured we could ambush them.
It was 24 degrees that morning, and when I reached down for my water bottle, I discovered it was frozen solid. But the turkeys were talking as they flew down, and as it got light, we saw the flock gathering at the other end of the field. Soon a few hens came our way and walked right by the blind.
There was a lull, and then another hen came by, and I saw another lone turkey making its way in our direction—another hen, I figured. Most of the flock was still at the end of the field, and we could hear a gobbler and see him strutting down there. Focusing on the distant flock, I paid little attention as the lone turkey walked casually past the blind. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed it had a beard—not a long beard, but not a jake beard, either. This gobbler had never fanned out or gobbled, just moseyed past us in a sort of gobbler stealth mode. Unfortunately, by the time I spotted the beard, the bird had scooted on past the blind and my chance was lost.
We continued to hunt for the rest of the morning, but I’d had my best chance and blown it, making me the only hunter out of the eight in our group who went home empty-handed. But I wasn’t unhappy—I could only laugh ruefully at the way I had been outsmarted by a pea-brained bird. I’d been more than fortunate to have the chance to hunt the beautiful rolling hills of Devils Tower country with a sleek new shotgun and enjoy some close encounters of the turkey kind.
