Browning Auto 5 Shotgun Review

No other shotgun feels quite like an original Browning Auto 5 when it goes off. The entire barrel moves backward with the bolt, then forward as it picks up the next shell and returns to battery. That unique bouncing recoil sensation, the Auto 5’s many fans will tell you, is just one more way you know that you’re shooting the greatest semiauto shotgun ever made. 

You’ll still see Auto 5s today in duck blinds, 120 years after the gun’s invention, shooting beat for beat with modern guns. Granted, the new semiauto shotguns may have passed it by technologically, but the fact remains: John Browning invented the semiauto, and everyone else tried to play catch-up for the next 60 years and couldn’t. 

Even when they did, The Auto 5 survived another 30 years in production, until it was finally retired in the 1990s.

Browning, who held 120-odd patents in his life, considered the Auto 5 to be his greatest invention. It was also his most profitable. The Auto 5 was made for almost 100 years from 1903 to 1998. It served in war and peace, as a hunting gun, a trap gun, a skeet gun, and as a combat shotgun. Over two and a half million were made, and that doesn’t count the nearly identical Remington Model 11s and Savage 720s built on license. Add those guns, and the total climbs well over 3,000,000.

• Action:  Long recoil semiautomatic
• Produced: 1902-1998
• Designer:  John M Browning
• Gauges:  12, 16, 20
• Notable Variants: Light 12, Sweet 16, 12- and 20-gauge magnums

Birth of the Auto 5

When he began work on his semiauto shotgun, Browning had already harnessed expanding gases to cycle semiautomatic and full-auto actions. For a shotgun, he needed a different approach. Military weapons need only function with a single, standard-issue cartridge, while a sporting shotgun has to work with light target loads, standard hunting loads and heavy waterfowl ammo. That variety of ammunition requires an action that can cycle shells of all velocities, payloads and pressures. Browning searched for a way to regulate the velocity of the bolt and the speed at which the action cycled with anything from target to heavy hunting loads.  

In 1898, he and his brothers built three prototypes. The design that showed the most promise worked on the long recoil principle. In long recoil operation, the barrel and the bolt move back together. The bolt is held back briefly as the spring on the magazine tube drives the barrel forward, ejecting the spent shell on the forward stroke, then the bolt follows as the lifter brings the next shell up where the bolt can slide it into the chamber, then lock. 

In such a system, the heavier the load, the faster it drives the bolt and barrel backward. Make a long-recoil gun that can function with light loads, and heavy loads will send the barrel and action backward so hard that it eventually damages the gun. Use springs stout enough to cycle heavy loads without damaging the gun, and light-load recoil won’t be enough to work the action. 

Browning’s answer was a set of adjustable friction rings on the mag tube that provided the right amount of braking for light and heavy loads. The Browning brothers tested the gun extensively, more, in fact, than any of John’s other designs, to be sure it worked perfectly. When it did, he took the gun to Winchester. 

Bringing the Auto 5 to Market

Unlike many inventors, John Browning had good business sense. He knew the Auto 5 was revolutionary and believed it would be a huge success. From 1883 to 1900, he had sold 44 gun designs to Winchester outright. This time, he demanded a royalty. Winchester’s T.G. Bennet refused. The negotiations grew heated. Browning broke with Winchester and never sold them another gun.

He then took the gun to Remington, but the day Browning was set to meet with Remington’s president Martellus Hartley, Hartley died of a heart attack while Browning sat outside his office in the waiting room. The new leadership at Remington turned the gun down. Browning had no choice but to go to FN in Belgium, with whom he had worked before. FN made the gun for Browning Arms Company. John eventually did license his gun to Remington, which produced it as the Remington Model 11 from 1905 to 1947. After his death, the design was also licensed to Savage, which called it the Model 720 and made it from 1930 to 1949.

During World War II when Belgium was occupied by the Nazis, Auto 5s, nicknamed “American Brownings” were made in the Remington factory alongside the Model 11s. In 1976, rising Belgian labor costs prompted Browning to shift Auto 5 production from FN to Miroku in Japan. The Auto 5’s run ended in 1998 after 2,700,000 A5s were made. By the very end of the Auto 5’s lifespan it was obsolete: most other semiautos could shoot all loads without adjustment, many with reduced recoil and improved reliability. Nevertheless, it was the Auto 5 that made them all possible.

Auto 5 Variants

The Auto 5 appeared in many variants in three gauges — 12, 16, and 20 – for sporting, trap, skeet, deer hunting, military, and law enforcement purposes. In 1937, Browning introduced one of the all-time favorite configurations, the lightened “Sweet 16” which was made until 1975, except for the WWII years when Germany occupied the FN factory. There would also be a brief run of Japanese Sweet 16s in the late 80s/early 90s. Post-war, Browning offered a 3-inch magnum 12-gauge in 1958, and a 3-inch 20-gauge in 1967. Also, beginning in 1958, Browning came out with Super Lightweight Auto 5s, first with alloy trigger guards and other parts, then eventually with alloy receivers that trimmed the weight of a 20-gauge gun to an even 6 pounds. 

Tips for Buying and Owning an Auto 5

With 2.7 million made, there are plenty of Auto 5s still kicking around. There’s no reason why one of them shouldn’t be yours. As you’d expect, it’s the 16s and 20s that carry the highest price tags. They’ll start above $2,000 and go up from there depending on condition. Belgian guns bring the highest prices, and the most desirable Auto 5s have the “round knob” grip, what we’d call a Prince of Wales grip today. 

You can find a 12-gauge shooter for under $1,000, and don’t turn up your nose at the Miroku-made Japanese Auto 5s. For one thing, they have barrels made of steel tough enough for steel and tungsten-iron shot. If you buy a Belgian-made A5, you’ll be restricted to shooting lead or bismuth. There are some A5 fans who argue that despite the prestige attached to the Belgian guns, the Japanese guns are made just as well — and possibly a little better.

Read Next: Belgium vs. Japan: Who Made the Better Browning Auto-5?

Also, I am here to tell you, as one whose first gun was an Auto 5, that the words “Light Twelve” engraved on the receiver are an outright lie. Mine was eight pounds and change, which eventually led me to sell it. All these years later, I am lowkey looking for another Light 12. It was a wonderful gun with which I shot a lot of my first of everything, from doves to deer.

Keep it clean, put a bit of lube on the magazine tube, and your Auto 5 will not fail you. I’d like to have one again to shoot at ducks and geese with 2 ¾-inch bismuth.

If you’re buying a used Auto 5, add “rings,” “fore-end” and “chamber” to your inspection checklist. Be sure both friction rings are in place. Auto 5s will work without rings, but you and the gun will both take a beating without them. Auto 5 fore-ends are made from thin wood and they have a tendency to crack or warp (you’ll see a gap between the wood and steel if you look down from the top) especially if the gun has been shot with the rings set improperly. Most Auto 5s have a diagram glued inside the fore-end to show you how to set up the rings for heavy and light loads. Some Auto 5s (mostly 16 gauges) made before World War II, have 2 9/16 inch chambers but can be converted to shoot modern ammunition by a gunsmith.  

While most gunsmiths can work on Auto 5s, the Browning experts at Art’s Gunshop in Hillsboro, Missouri, have seen every problem an Auto 5 can have. They are also the people you want restoring your older Auto 5.

Read Next: 10 Classic Shotguns Every Wingshooter Should Own

Final Thoughts on the Browning Auto 5

Yes, Browning makes an A5 today which resembles the humpback profile of the original Auto 5. It is not the same gun as Browning’s long recoil model. It’s an inertia-operated gun modeled after the Benelli. In some ways, it’s a better gun than the original John Browning invention: lighter, and able to shoot all loads without adjustment or fiddling with friction rings. I have no doubt that if Browning were alive to see the A5, he would approve. 

Read Next: The Best Bird Hunting Shotguns, Tested and Reviewed

The new A5 in no way diminishes its namesake. The original Auto 5 is a piece of history you can shoot. It’s made the old way, with all-steel, machined components, and not a scrap of alloy (except in the Superlights) or plastic anywhere among its parts. And, while it’s a relic of another time, it’s also an awfully reliable, functional firearm even today, and a gun well worth seeking out if you aren’t lucky enough to already own one.