Like most Beretta’s we’ve opened a box on, the Teknys Gold Sporting is immediately eye-catching. Our sample sported a chocolate-cherry piece of wood that while not fancily figured, showed some very handsome striation. With an oil finish that’s polished enough to look like a lacquer finish, this stock is nice enough that it justifies the gun’s steeper price tag.
The buttstock, as is typical for many Berettas, is tall at its buttplate end. There’s a lot of wood back there, in part because it accommodates Beretta’s super-comfy Gel-Tek recoil pad. Now, the Teknys also comes with a standard soft-rubber pad, but we love the extra-smooth heel and toe of the Gel-Tek so much, not to mention its added ability to absorb recoil, that we can imagine only one reason why anyone would want to switch the two out. That reason is fit.
While both pads are the same width at the center point, the Gel-Tek pad has a more pronounced concave design than the standard rubber pad. It also has a more pronounced heel and toe. However, it wasn’t that the design was so visually exaggerated, but more that its configuration created a near glove fit for tall women or average-height men (roughly 5 feet 9 inches. In fact, our testers said that the pad aided in the consistency of the gun-to-shoulder placement during mounting. The heel and toe “bumps” helped prevent canting. As most competitive shooters who employ a low mount know, consistency in the mount and gun placement on the shoulder are half the battle in gaining more Xs. We feel that all but the smallest shooters will appreciate the benefits of the concave Gel-Tek pad on the Technys. And for those who don’t, they have the alternate pad available.
