Saiga-12 Review

[Zarvan]

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Traditional pump-action and semi-automatic tactical shotguns share one serious shortcoming: They are slow to reload. Although they possess formidable short-range terminal performance, they hold a limited number of rounds. When those rounds are gone, the magazine takes a considerable amount of time to replenish. This is due to their feeding from a tube magazine.
Magazine capacity is, of course, limited by tube length. Rounds need to be loaded one at a time, and under stress this can be agonizingly slow. In reality, loading a traditional shotgun is no faster than loading a French Mle. 1886 Lebel, and that was obsolete before World War I. Luckily, a tube full of 00 buck is all that’s required in a typical self-defense scenario. However, if you’ve ever longed for a tactical shotgun that was a bit more modern, there is one to consider. It’s the Saiga-12, and it’s a 12-gauge shotgun variation of the famous AK-47.

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Saiga, which means Steppe antelope, is a line of sporting firearms produced by Izhmash OJSC of Izhevsk, Russia. Izhmash OJSC is also a major producer of Russian small arms and the home of both the AK47 and the SVD. Izhevsk is also the adopted home of Mikhail Timofeevich Kalashnikov. The Saiga-12 is a semi-automatic, 12-gauge incarnation of Mikhail Kalashnikov’s legendary design. Better still, like the AK-47, the Saiga-12 feeds from detachable box magazines. Think about it. A semi-automatic, magazine-fed, 12-gauge AK. Some interesting possibilities for a fighting shotgun come to mind.

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The man behind transforming the Kalashnikov into a shotgun was not Mikhail Kalashnikov, but another famous Russian designer, Gennady Nikolayevich Nikonov. Unlike Kalashnikov, Nikonov was actually born in Izhevsk, which is about 1,500 kilometers east of Moscow. Both his father and mother were employed by Izhmash, so it ran in his blood. His father worked as a mechanic at the huge facility, which employed tens of thousands. At the age of 18, Nikonov graduated from technical school. While there, he became obsessed with underwater rifles. He won his first professional recognition by designing a trigger mechanism for an underwater rifle. To further his education, he took evening classes while working at Izhmash. He graduated from the well-respected Izhevsk Mechanical Institute as a certified firearms engineer in 1975. After graduating, he went on to a post-graduate Ph.D course. He eventually married someone who could understand his work, another firearms designer named Tatiana. They had two sons, Nikolay and Yuri.
NEWS: Saiga-12 Review

@Rashid Mahmood @AUSTERLITZ @fatman17 @mafiya @Chak Bamu

 

[AUSTERLITZ]

Good info from these posts zarvan,u doing great job in guns corner section.

 

[Informant]

@Zarvan AA-12 is a much MUCH MUCH better auto shotgun. Better recoil handling. Saiga is just too violent for auto use.