Becky McKenzie was so taken with this month’s test gun, she went out and bought one herself
Becky McKenzie is the current English Open Compak Ladies Champion and a clay shooting coach
ON TEST: PERAZZI MX2000S
This month I set out to review the Perazzi MX2000S. Up till now I have never had the chance to really try a Perazzi, as I was sponsored for over seven years by Zoli, one of their direct competitors. That’s not quite true. Years ago I had tried a Perazzi MX8 on Olympic Skeet, and decided it was good quality but not the gun for me. That came about in 2010, when Joe Neville, the GB Olympic Skeet Coach, invited me to try Olympic Skeet up on his ground. I was shooting an old Krieghoff K80 at the time, and had very little interest in Skeet, let alone Olympic Skeet. I wasn’t all that keen to try either, most likely fear of making an absolute fool of myself!
I remember his words: “If you can shoot 92 round a tough course at Doveridge, you can shoot Olympic Skeet easy!’ What’s the harm in trying I thought, so I went and had a go. My husband had made me shoot English Skeet for a year when I first started shooting and I felt I was fairly competent at that, so surely OS couldn’t be too bad. I soon learnt otherwise!
You have a line above your pocket where the gun stock has to be, you can’t move the gun before the clay comes, there’s a delay of up to three seconds and when it comes it is FAST! I quickly realised the K80 was not the tool for the job. Research showed that Perazzi was the top Olympic Skeet gun to use so I decided to try one. We met Chris Little at Park Lodge one wintry day to try his custom MX8. It was a lovely gun, but I found it felt very ‘whippy’ and wouldn’t hold a consistent line. Chris then introduced me to Zoli and the rest is history.
So my one early impression of Perazzi left me feeling it was not the gun for me. Last year in Holland I was having a few tantrums with my Krieghoff K80 in 32in mode. My dear Dutch friends thrust a High Tech into my hands, and I must say it had a cracking bit of wood – and it opened and shut smoothly, which by now you’ll know I have a thing about. When it came to shooting it on the pool shoot, however, it took off like a ballistic missile and I was way way in front of all the targets. This model did keep a good line, but I couldn’t get my head around the speed of the barrels.
Picking a test gun
Despite all this I wanted to review a Perazzi, so I visited my local gun shop, JF Neville, and spoke with Mark, the owne
