be added. Matte finish is evenly applied to this
businesslike pistol.
Taking a sight picture, it’s as if you were looking down a long pier going out toward the water; a pier with a handrail on each side. This slim pistol’s balance is excellent, and there are attachment points provided to hang weights from the front if the shooter wants a more muzzle-heavy feel. Overall, this blue steel pistol, despite its matte finish, just reeks of quality. The skeletonized slide runs smoothly under a rugged sight rib that sits above the action like a bridge, keeping the sights solidly oriented to the barrel. In this, it reminds the shooter of two of the most proven American match target .22 pistols, the High Standard Victor and the Smith & Wesson Model 41. Its frame composition has been described as “zirconium-aluminum alloy.” The slide has extensions running on either side toward the muzzle, with finger grooves. This is one pistol that you pretty much have to operate by reaching up underneath the front, with thumb on one side and fingertips on the other, and push back to activate the gun. The good news is that these grooves are a safe distance back from the muzzle, making this a much safer handling protocol than doing the same with, say, a Beretta 92 or a 1911 pistol with trendy forward slide grooves.
The barrel weight and sight rib enhance the monolithic muzzle of the Model 87. The barrel weight is removable.
The trigger pull is smooth, with an easy roll, reminding the shooter of the old Model 34 .380 or Beretta’s middle period pocket pistol in .22 LR, the Model 70. However, it had horrendous backlash, perhaps the worst I’ve ever encountered on a .22 caliber single-action auto. When the sear released, the trigger and finger took a long plunge straight back until they stopped against the frame. This unfortunate circumstance, called backlash or overtravel, is ruinous to accuracy.
The Model 89 Gold Standard, as I recall, had an adjustable trigger that was hugely better. It is sad that this attribute did not survive in the Model 87 Target incarnation.
My friend and fellow gun writer David Fortier recently wrote up the Model 87 Target in the 2005 Shooting Times Handgun Buyers’ Guide. He tested a dozen different match-grade .22 loads at 50 yards. This is twice the distance at which most handguns are accuracy tested, and is the yardage at which precision slow fire takes place in classic American bull’s-eye matches. All 12 loads grouped well under 2 inches at 50 yards. Two grouped under an inch: Eley 40-grain Tenex delivered 0.87 inches, and Wolf 40-grain Match Gold did 0.67 inches. David wrote that he was firing off sandbags with a Burris 2x to 7x variable telescopic sight attached to the Weaver rails.
That, my friends, is match-winning accuracy. It’s built in at the plant in Italy. The trick is getting that accuracy out of the pistol.
David explained that he shot his at a seminar that Beretta held for the writers at the company he works for, Primedia. He described his test pistol’s trigger pull as follows: “The trigger was a bit heavier, 4.5 pounds, than I like. Don’t get me wrong. It was crisp with zero creep, no overtravel, and only took 3/16 inch of forward travel to reset.” (1)
I re-read that. “Huh? No over-travel? How come David and his buddies at Primedia rate? Where do I get an 87 like that?”
Apparently, the test gun provided had been specially tuned at the factory. Much more overtravel, resulting in backlash, is present in every out-of-the-box Model 87 Target I’ve run across.
Now, by the time I read David’s article, I had been shooting a test sample Model 87 Target provided by Beretta for this book. It was certainly a sweet-shooting little gun, but I wasn’t getting nearly the five-shot groups David was. I was using the iron sights, not a 7X scope, and that could have been part of it. I’ve seen David Fortier shoot, and I can tell you he’s a superb marksman, and that could have been a part of it. But after fighting with the trigger group after group, while the “best three shot” clusters were indicating tremendous accuracy potential, the fact that his pistol had no overtravel and mine had enough overtravel to qualify for frequent flyer miles probably also had something to do with the less than stellar performance.
The side of the conversion unit’s slide is distinctly marked.
This is Beretta’s own .22 conversion unit for full-length Model 92 and 96 traditional double-action pistols. It includes a magazine.
Earlier, a friend and fellow firearms instructor in Michigan, Jeff Brooks, had bought a Model 87 Target for his young son. He was not any happier with the backlash than I was, or with the heavy (for a bull’s-eye pistol) trigger pull weight that left Fortier dissatisfied. Jeff told me of his specimen, “Trigger overtravel is absolutely horrible and very excessive.” He asked me to recommend a pistolsmith.
I told him to try Ernest Langdon, who specializes in Berettas, and that if Langdon didn’t handle that model, to try Teddy Jacobson at Actions by T in Sugarland, Texas. It turned out that Langdon preferred to do major work only on Model 92 and 96 pistols, and light action hones on Cougars, and didn’t work on 80-Series Berettas at all. Jacobson, on the other hand, took on the job. Jeff reported after he got the gun back from the masterful Texas pistolsmith, “We love the 87 Target. Teddy Jacobson did an outstanding job on trigger pull weight, smoothness, and travel.” He sent me some pictures of young Jonathan and some of his targets, and it’s clear, both shooter and pistol are doing fine.
The test gun I had belonged to Beretta, not to me. I’m used to heavy triggers, generally specifying around 4.5 pounds single-action in my pistols, so that didn’t bother me. My test Model 87 Target’s trigger was also quite smooth out of the box. It was the backlash I wanted to fix, and I wasn’t about to drill a hole through the frame of a pistol that belonged to Beretta, to install a set screw to act as a trigger stop. I joked with my buddy Jon Strayer, “I oughta take a piece of pencil eraser and duct tape it to the inside back of the trigger guard.”
The conversion unit, in place, duplicates all functions of the M9 barrel/slide assembly it has just replaced.
The rear sight of the Beretta .22 conversion unit appears to be the Italian LPA. It works extremely well.
Jon said, “I can do better. Be right back.” A short time later he returned with the test gun. He had taken a small piece of floor protector – the heavy fiber pads that adhere to the bottoms of things like table legs to keep them from scarring the floors they stand on – and applied it to the inside rear of the trigger guard.
What a difference! The makeshift trigger stop worked. All of a sudden, the sights did not move off target when the hammer fell. Groups shrank immediately. My first five shots with CCI Pistol Match with the trigger stop installed, off an MTM pistol rest at 25 yards, landed in a group measuring just 0.95 inches. The best three shots, probably the best indicator of the gun’s mechanical accuracy potential without putting it in a machine rest, were all touching and center-to-center measured 0.35 inches. And this was still with iron sights.
I’ve had better luck in terms of reliability than Fortier, who wrote, “Reliability during testing was very good but not flawless. Occasionally
