Browning Liberty Light

Light weight guns have always interested me, primarily from a hunting situation, as the ease of manoeuvrability and reduced fatigue whilst hefting the gun about is handy.

Lightweights are also useful to teach younger shots, people of smaller stature, both male or female. Trouble is, sometimes it’s just a cut and shut case with a reduced size version of the parent gun. Browning do things differently and the new Liberty Light is a 12-gauge only shotgun, designed around making a lighter gun but still gives great handling. There has been a re-design of the B525 action to alloy, and the design features lighter barrels, re profiled stock and pistol grip areas.

It all adds up to a very competent and great handling lightweight gun that will probably spend most of its life on the clay grounds but would be just at home after pigeon or game.

These shotguns are made in Japan at the Miroku factory and offer good value at just under £2000.

Barrels

You have a choice of 28-inch or 30-inch barrels but only in 12-gauge. They have a lighter feel to them, continuing the lightweight ethos. Being Browning, you also have the really good back-bored technology inside, with the barrel internal dimensions being slightly over-sized. This gives the smoother passage of the wadded shot column that has two effects; velocity is increased, due to reduced friction and recoil is also reduced, due to the smoother, wider bore surfaces. I had the 30-inch barrel lengths, and being a lighter weight gun, that extra length added little perceived weight and had the nice feeling of a bit of added swing.

The finish was a deep, rich bluing with vented top rib and separating rib. The top rib is 8mm wide and has 15 vents that are small and close to the barrel’s circumference and a mid-rib that has larger longer vents, then a solid section at the forend and then one long vent to the monobloc. Both vent arrangements reduce weight further and add a lot more surface area to the barrels to speed away heat and avoid any nasty heat mirage.

There is a single white bead at the muzzle, which is all you need, as this Browning has a more ‘heads up’ stance on firing anyway and that single bead is instantly tracking that game instinctively. These are still steel proofed barrels with the Fleur de Lis proof marks, so despite being a lightweight, it’s capable of a myriad of shotgun duties.

The choke system is the Invector Plus system and you have a set of four chokes included and these are the extended type. These have a blued outer indicator ring, with the choke size embossed onto them and then an exposed, striated cut grip area of 2cm. The rest of the 6cm length is screwed into the barrels. The chokes are also finished in a gold anodising for their 8cm length.

I don’t like the look of extended chokes, but I do like their performance, with a lengthened surface area for an easement of the shot column to any restriction and they can be easily removed and embossed in grey to instantly see choke size fitted.

Action

Another reason the Liberty is light, is the alloy action. This has all the joint points strengthened with steel inserts at the head area. But this allows a big weight reduction, so the 6lb weight is achievable.

The usual locking arrangement that makes Brownings so strong with steel locking lugs protruding through from barrel lugs and relatively deep action profile remains 65mm depth and 40mm wide and the coin finished alloy action is elegant. The engraving, which is machine cut, is much better than most. It harks a little back to the older Brownings; in that, I mean it is deep cut scroll type and has finer scrolls accented with larger deeper scroll work – classy. This scroll work is duplicated on the trigger guard, underneath and on the top lever and safety too; it is marked ‘B525 Liberty Light’ on the action base.

You have a non-auto safety; again, I like that, and the barrel selector is left for top barrel (1/2 choke) and right for bottom barrel (1/4 choke) as fitted. It’s easy to use quite instinctive now.

The trigger is typically Gold washed and adjustable for length of pull trigger by sliding it along its retaining rail and locking with the grub screw.

Stock

This is a re-profiled design that is not necessarily obvious from the outset. The pistol grip is well defined and quite upright with no palm swell but feels full and quite a good cast right and semi raised comb section, with a cheekpiece to the top but not side. This gives an upright position, to see the rib clearly and the pistol grip is also shorter to the trigger to reduce finger stretch. These Monte Carlo style dimensions suit the smaller frame better and look nice too.

Overall length of pull can be adjusted by the Inflex recoil pad, which is very good and 25mm thick. This can be changed with the two alternate thicknesses that are included. This pad is a directional recoil pad system, which means that recoil is directed away from the face and down, further reducing the felt recoil.

The walnut stock is graded at 2 to 3 but is a little plain I thought, with a straight grained red walnut with generous chequering to the pistol grip and forend. The forend is 10.5-inches long and 2-inches wide at the fattest point and has a rounded, angled tip and typical Browning rounded profile to cup the hand comfortably.

Field Test

With the half choke fitted and testing on the pattern boards at 30-yards, it was clear that this Liberty was a sweet shooter and produced some excellent pellet patterns. This translates into smashed clays or dead game. Reduced recoil, due to back bored technology and when using 21- to 24-gram loads, recoil is no more than a standard weight gun. The 28- to 32-grams were more noticeable, so stick to the sub 28-grams, which work a treat. Stupidly, I took the heavier loads for the pattern tests to Scotland for testing, but despite this, they patterned very well.

The Lyalvale Supreme Game is a good game load but always produces good patterns and with this 30- gram load of larger No. 5 shot proved this. I had a total of 182 No. 5 pellets hit the 30-inch board, distributed with 58 inner strikes and 124 outer pellet hits. The overall pattern was well distributed for the larger shot with the ½ choke fitted, a great duck load.

The Hull High Pheasant Extreme were next, and this heavy 32-gram load and No. 5 shot size really shot well. Recoil was stiff but fine for me but better still were the patterns. I had a total of 167 total pellets on the board, with a dense, well-spread 63 inner strikes and 104 outer No. 5 pellets. Again, a really lovely pattern, no holes, well spread and even, just what you want from a shotgun.

Finally, a good clay load is the Eley VIP Sporting. This had a 28-gram No. 6 shot size load and produced some very nice patterns.

A total of 259 pellet strikes at 30-yards, with 107 within 15-inches and then the remaining 152 pellets spread evenly around the circumference.

Conclusion

Another great over/under from Browning that will appeal to younger or smaller framed shooters and should prove popular with clay grounds as a training gun.

I shot some stiff cartridges, but it’s really designed for lighter loads; regardless, the patterns of these new backbored and Invector choked shotguns are really superb. It gives the confidence to tackle tricky shots and with a light weight gun that handles very well and can be a clay buster and then a rough or game gun as you like.