You may not be aware of this, but there are lots of shotguns coming out of Turkey. Some are high quality, and others are not. Many of the top shotgun manufacturers are having their premier shotguns made in Turkey. You may be spending a large sum of money for a particular brand that may be using Turkish manufacturers that are putting their brand name on the shotgun.

I have been asked to evaluate an Aselkon shotgun which is one manufactured in Turkey and imported by ADCO.

The first thing I noticed when I picked up this shotgun was the weight. It is light and comfortable to maneuver. The basic specifications on the shotgun are that it is semiautomatic, weighs 6.5 pounds, has replaceable chokes, a barrel length of 18.5 inches and an overall length of 40 inches.

The shotgun was shipped with the barrel and forend disassembled. It did not go together as smoothly as I anticipated. I discovered that the forend and barrel had to be squeezed together. Once I took it apart several times, the assembly became smoother. When reinstalling the barrel into the receiver, follow the directions in the assembly portion of the manual. When the shotgun is new, the forend is stiff, and you must press the forend and barrel into the receiver as a unit. There are small plastic tabs on the base of the plastic forend and if you are not cautious, you could destroy these alignment tabs.

Once the shotgun is assembled, it is easy to notice the forend and the one-piece pistol grip have a very good fit to the receiver. These two components blended to the receiver flawlessly.

The Aselkon is equipped with different chokes allowing the shotgun to shoot a variety of loads for hunting or tactical use. What I really liked was the extended chamber extension that is chromed. During loading and unloading, the bolt only rides on the chromed barrel extension. This function will reduce the amount of lubrication necessary, which means you could shoot this shotgun in a dry, arid environment.

The sights are ghost ring with a high profile. They are adjustable for windage and elevation. With this sight, it was easy to get sight alignment and to reengage a target. Additionally, the high wings around the rear sight protect the ghost ring.

The sights are, also, mounted on a weaver-type rail that is fit on grooved slots cut into the receiver, with a screw holding it in place. The sight base allows for the mounting of scopes or other optical sights.

Shooting the shotgun was very simple. It is a lightweight shotgun, so I was surprised that using standard number six shot, there was not a noticeable difference in the recoil. I shot a few slugs (because why not), and there was a noticeable increase in recoil. However, a lightweight shotgun, that is weather resistant and can shoot a variety of different loads, at a moderate price, is hard to beat.