Unfortunately, all of us can’t afford a custom-fitted shotgun that may triple the price of the original off-the-shelf donor. Of course, every sporting-gun guru will swear that a shotgun fitted to your exact measurements can effectively improve your performance through an optimal sight picture, impeccable gun mount and intuitive trigger control. 

But let’s face it, checking out at the supermarket these days or a visit to the gas-station pump might upend your priorities with the harsh financial disappointment that your dreamy beauty of a bespoke over/under may find its way into your gun safe…after the kids graduate college (and dear God don’t move back home)?

The Rizzini BR240 Cole Special.

For wing and clays shooters living in that nagging economic impasse, some of us may joke that Rich Cole, with his Cole Special shotguns, is somewhat of a saint. The gist of a Cole Special is to tweak the original mass-market shotgun with higher grade walnut featuring better ergonomics based on his decades of experience as a gunfitter. Although other goodies abound in the package, a Cole Special turns your average sporting shotgun into a far better version of itself with a boost of aesthetics and performance. While a Cole Special doesn’t carry the price tag or personalization of a custom-fitted shotgun, its totality of incremental upgrades certainly brings you closer to reaching your full shooting potential. 

Rich Cole’s Specials actually started with Berettas. In 1979, he joined Beretta USA as a five-dollar-per-hour apprentice gunsmith. The job included extensive time at the mothership in Gardone, Italy learning the finer points of repairing and enhancing Beretta sporting shotguns. Come 1985, Rich started Cole Gunsmithing in the small fishing town of Harpswell, Maine – leveraging that six-year stint as a shotgun gunsmith for Beretta into his own business specializing in the Italian marque. 

Rich Cole shooting clays with his new Rizzini BR240 Cole Special.

Cole Gunsmithing performed contract shotgun repairs for Beretta. Over the years, Rich built a reputation in the sporting-gun community as an honest master gunsmith, which fed the growth of his business. Cole Gunsmithing became a Beretta Authorized Service Center followed by his appointment as a Beretta Premium Dealer. Today, Cole Gunsmithing has been voted the number-one Beretta Premium Dealer in the U.S. 

By 2014, Rich and his wife Jona wanted to ease into semi-retirement. They moved to Naples, Florida and opened a shop. Naples, with an average family income of nearly $105,000, is the richest city in the state; plus there’s plenty of excellent clays shooting around there. Now named Cole Fine Guns and Gunsmithing, the Naples showroom, gunsmithing and machine-shop operations spearhead Cole’s enormous success. 

Still, Rich’s affinity for creating Cole Specials remains devoted to the Italians, and his latest creation is the Rizzini BR240 clays over/under.

Mechanically, the Rizzini BR240 is straightforward. It’s a steel-frame boxlock with a single selective inertia trigger adjustable for length of pull. The receiver has a lovely Cerakote satin-black finish. The decorative pinstriping and the shotgun’s brand are 24-carat gold. The shotgun is available in 12, 20, 28 and .410 gauges. Monobloc barrels are offered in 28, 29, 30 and 32 inch nickel-chrome lined bores with a vented mid-rib finished in flawless satin black. The BR240 has Rizzini’s XL BORE profile barrels with an internal bore of .732 inches and 5 ¼-inch long forcing cones. The stock and field-style forend are grade 2.5 Turkish walnut. Rizzini also offers a BR 240 EL with full-coverage foliate engraving over a coin background. For his Cole Special, though, Rich opted for the sleek black version. 

The 24-carat gold branding on the receiver bottom of the BR240 Cole Special.

Working in conjunction with Rich, Rizzini developed the BR240 Cole Special exclusive to Cole Fine Guns & Gunsmithing. Using Grade 3 Turkish walnut, Rich created the stock specifications of 14¾-inch length of pull, neutral cast, slight palm swell and 20 lines-per-inch hand-checkering. (the oil finish is flawless). It’s available with or without an adjustable comb. In terms of fit, as a baseline, at 171 pounds and 5 feet/9 inches that length of pull was near perfect for me.

The BR240 Cole Special performance package includes five Cole Precision Chokes for the Rizzini XL Bore (skeet, improve cylinder, modified, light modified and improved modified), and a Cole Speed Wrench. The chokes are machined from 17-4 PH stainless steel and extend one inch. Cole will tell you they are designed for clays.

Cole’s Precision Chokes for the Rizzini XL Bore.

The BR240 Cole Special comes in 12-gauge and 20-gauge, both left and right handed with either 30-inch or 32-inch barrels or a combo set of 12-gauge and 20-gauge 32-inch barrels. Prices start at $5,100 and run up to $7,500 for the combo.

(As a purist I don’t like using shotguns with adjustable combs in the field – but the fixed stock BR240 Cole Special would make a lovely bird gun, especially as a combo for hunting the quarry at hand.) 

Regardless of whether you’re shooting birds or clays, the fundamentals of good technique and focus always apply. That means you want a shotgun that doesn’t distract you with a stubborn trigger, annoying muzzle bias, excessive weight, overly long stock, jarring recoil or a receiver that obfuscates the target. A shotgun should be completely organic to your shooting experience.

And after shooting 5-Stand with the BR240 Cole Special I felt that it was an organic, unobtrusive over/under that freed me to focus entirely on breaking clays. I shot a BR240 Cole Special with 32-inch barrels and adjustable comb that carried a price tag of $5,400. 

Grade 3 Turkish walnut is standard on the BR240 Cole Special.

The Ranges at Oakfield 5-Stand in our hometown of Thomasville, Georgia sets a high bar. If you want lollipop targets you’ll have better luck on the skeet field. The 8.6-pound BR240 Cole Special proved a well-behaved shotgun, its heft evenly balanced from a low-gun mount to deliver excellent swing dynamics, punctuated by a crisp trigger that responded as though hard-wired to the breakpoint. 

Out of the box, it shot nearly flat – always a personal preference. Even though the trigger was inertia, its 3½-pound pull rivaled tournament-grade shotguns at triple the price. Here in South Georgia, August is a hot mess of high 90s with humidity that seems to clog your lungs. Sweating like a madman made me appreciate the angles and points of the 20-lines per inch checkering that promoted a firm grip. The gentle palm swell enhanced that feeling of control.

The 20-lines per inch checkering on the BR240 Cole Special proved helpful when shooting in high heat and humidity.

When it comes to clays shooting, I’m one of those guys who overcompensates with heavy loads, so in shooting the BR240 Cole Special I used 12-gauge Federal Top Gun packed with 1⅛ ounce of #8s rated at 1200 fps velocity. Happy to report only a smidge of felt recoil to the face with a slight nudge to the shoulder – expressly helpful when transitioning from the first to second target in simultaneous pairs. In 5-Stand, you get two shots at the first of five targets per position, and when I missed the first time the Cole Precision Chokes reached way out there for hard-won, second-shot X on the scorecard.

The value proposition of the BR240 Cole Special is hard to dispute. If you’re like me, you get one of those two-year, interest-free credit cards and pay it out while enjoying a high-value sporting gun.

Irwin Greenstein is the Publisher of Shotgun Life. You can contact him via the Shotgun Life Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/shotgunlife

Helpful resources:

The web site for Cole Fine Guns and Gunsmithing

Irwin Greenstein

Irwin Greenstein is Publisher of Shotgun Life. Please send your comments to letters@shotgunlife.com.

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