Quick-Handling & Smooth-Swinging

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Savage introduced the Model 555 over-under shotgun in 2014, and its story has been one of great success. Soon thereafter, the Compact version with a pull length of 13.25 inches and shorter forearm for smaller shooters was added. The big news for 2024 is the introduction of Sporting and Sporting Compact versions of the Model 555, and while certain features were enhanced to make the guns more appealing to shooters who enjoy participating in clay target games, such as skeet, sporting clays, 5-stand, and trap, a brief look into my trusty crystal ball reveals them becoming even more popular among hunters.

From its very beginning, the Model 555 has been available in 12 and 20 gauges, and the company has not overlooked the sweet little .410. The three receivers are scaled to gauge. The standard version of the Model 555 has been available in 28 gauge, and I must say I was surprised to see it missing in the Sporting lineup.

For the benefit of inquiring minds, I will explain why Savage is selling guns under another company name. Back in 1864 Joshua Stevens founded Stevens Arms and eventually promoted his company as the largest producer of sporting arms in the world. Some of the more successful were single-shot rifles and pistols of tip-up design chambered for various rimfire cartridges, including the .22 Long Rifle, which was developed by Stevens and introduced in 1884. Dozens of models with various types of actions followed, with the No. 44½ Ideal target rifle and its strong falling-block action in various rimfire and centerfire chamberings used by competitors across the country to set many accuracy records. But Stevens was probably best known for building economy-grade single-shot .22s, many of which were designed and priced to appeal to youngsters. Little Scout, Crack Shot, Marksman, Sure Shot, and Favorite were among those loved and cherished by farm boys all across the country. Stevens was purchased by New England Westinghouse in 1902, and then 18 years later the company was acquired by Savage.

Stevens Arms continued to produce rifles and shotguns at the old Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts, factory until production was moved to various Savage facilities in 1960. When Savage stopped using the Stevens name in 1991, some guns were discontinued, while others remained in production but under the Savage name. One of the more popular survivors was the Stevens Model 325 bolt action in .30-30 Winchester, which became the Savage Model 340. That same rifle was also marketed by Savage as the Springfield Model 840. It might be of interest to note that the Stevens Model 325 introduced the barrel retention nut still used by Savage on the Model 110 and other centerfire rifles. Savage revived the Stevens name in 1999, and it lives on today in the Model 334 bolt-action centerfire rifle and the Model 555 over-under shotgun. The shotgun was designed by and is built by Khan Arms Co. located in the Uzumlu district of northwestern Turkey. That particular factory is renowned for building rugged firearms of good quality at very affordable prices.

The New 555 Sporting .410

The Stevens 555 Sporting in .410 I am shooting weighs 5 pounds, 13.6 ounces on my postal scale, and overall length is 47.5 inches. Its nicely struck, 28-inch, chrome-lined barrels have 3.0-inch chambers and ventilated top and side ribs. The 0.380-inch-wide top rib has a 0.065-inch mid-bead and a 0.080-inch red fiber-optic front sight. As a way of slightly reducing muzzle rise during firing, both barrels have 15 small gas-escape ports located on both sides and about 3.0 inches aft of their muzzles. Exterior barrel diameter is 0.540 inch, and the barrels and the top and side ribs are nicely blued over a surface texture that totally eliminated reflections and glare while I was shooting on a bright, sunlit day.

Bore diameter of both barrels is 0.405 inch. Two of the extended choke tubes had 0.005 inch of constriction (Skeet), another was 0.013 inch (between Modified and Improved Modified), one was 0.015 inch (between Improved Modified and Light Full), and the fifth choke had 0.020 inch of constriction, which is Extra-Full for .410 shotguns. Those five choke tubes have all bases covered in the clay target games as well as putting the brakes on cottontails and catching up with flushing quail and crossing doves in midflight. The choke tubes and their wrench come in a nice, pocket-size hard case.

Breech lockup is simple, rugged, and trouble free. As the gun is closed, a sturdy locking bolt emerges from its recess at the bottom of the standing breech and engages bites (notches) machined into the rear surface of the barrel monobloc. Taper in the surfaces of the bites compensates for wear so bolt lockup will remain tight through generations of shooters. Thumbing the top lever to the right withdraws the locking bolt, freeing the barrels to rotate on trunnions machined into the inner walls of the frame, allowing the chambers to be loaded.

As is to be expected on a gun in its price range ($769 to $989, depending on the configuration), the 555 is without ejectors, although its extractor lifts fired cases enough for easy manual removal from the chambers even when gloves are worn. The frame is precision machined from a billet of aircraft-grade aluminum, with the face of its standing breech reinforced by a closely fitted steel insert.

The auto-selective trigger is mechanically reset (as opposed to recoil reset), which means that if the trigger is squeezed and a defective shell in the chamber does not fire, a second squeeze of the trigger will fire the shell in the other barrel.

The smooth-operating safety slide on the upper tang is the Browning H-style. With the slide resting in its far-right “Safe” position, pushing it forward allows the lower barrel to fire first when the trigger is squeezed. A second squeeze of the trigger fires the upper barrel. Barrel-firing sequence is reversed when the slide is pushed forward from its far-left position.

Why should all this be important enough to know? As customary when hunting, the choke in the top barrel of an over-under will have a bit more constriction than the choke in the lower barrel. When a bird flushes fairly close, the lower barrel is fired first because the shot charge emerges from it in a wider pattern. But let’s say that wily old bobwhite flushes wild, and a tighter shot pattern is needed to compensate for the greater distance. Quickly move the safety slide to the left and forward, and a light tug on the trigger will fire the upper barrel first. Average trigger pull weights as measured by my Lyman digital scale were 5 pounds, 15 ounces for the first pull and 6 pounds, 12 ounces for the second.

The finish on the Turkish walnut stock is quite good, and while checkering coverage is a bit skimpy, I never noticed when shooting the gun. Trim in both feel and appearance, the forearm has a Deeley-style latch that held tight during a lot of shooting while being easy to operate for detaching. The thick ventilated recoil pad did an excellent job of soaking up recoil. Whether I’m wearing a thin shirt on the skeet field or a heavy jacket when shooting quail in the snow, the stock pull length of 14.5 inches is good for me.

Field Report

With no open hunting season when I was reviewing the new 555 Sporting .410, I took the gun along with a good supply of 2.5-inch target loads and 3.0-inch hunting loads to the gun club. Up first was the patterning plate. Back home, I had shouldered the little gun with my usual hold and cheekweld and could see so much of the top of the receiver and all of the rib I expected it to shoot high, and I was right. Rather than placing the center of the shot pattern close to my hold point at 25 yards, both barrels placed the bottom edge of the pattern there. That was with the adjustable comb of the stock in its lowest position. A couple of friends had just finished a few rounds of skeet, so I asked them to try the gun at the patterning plate, and it shot much too high for them as well. I mentioned this to my Savage contact and was sent a second gun to try. The patterning plate revealed that it also was placing the bottom edge of its pattern on my hold point. In trap shooter speak, both were 100/0 guns. I was not surprised because drops at comb and heel of the two stocks were the same.

Moving back to the positive side, pellet distribution in most of the patterns shot at various distances with the five chokes was uniformly good. And with a balance point an inch forward of the hinge point, the gun proved to be quick-handling and smooth-swinging. I shot several rounds of skeet and 5-stand, and each time I remembered to hold low when swinging through, a clay target turned to dust.

Due to its light weight and easy-handling qualities, the 555 Sporting in .410 would not be a bad home-defense gun for the lady of the house, so from a distance of 12 yards, I ventilated several paper targets with Federal’s Personal Defense loading of the 3.0-inch shell containing five copper-plated 000 Buck pellets. With the Improved Cylinder choke tube installed, all pellets clustered inside a 5.0-inch circle.

What else would the gun be good for? Quite a few springs ago, my ancient but always reliable M.L. Lynch cedar box call lured a big turkey gobbler within 25 paces of my Winchester Model 42 pump gun in .410, and one shot dropped the bird where it stood. In those days most hunters would have classified my success as a stunt, but with the recent introduction of special turkey loads containing swarms of Tungsten Super Shot (TSS) by Federal, Remington, and several others, that no longer holds true. Regardless of further developments in ammunition, the .410 shotgun will never be a 60-yard gun, but many of us who have taken our share of gobblers through the decades have progressed from thinking in terms of how far away we can kill a bird to how close a bird can be called in before the shot is taken. For this reason, special lightweight .410 turkey guns introduced by Stevens, Mossberg, Traditions, and others are selling like hotcakes.

The 0.015-inch choke of the Sporting 555 has the same amount of constriction as the choke of the Stevens 301 single-shot turkey gun that is intended for use with the new crop of .410 turkey loads. After setting up three Birchwood Casey turkey targets at 35 yards, I rested the 555 Sporting with the 0.015-inch choke in its lower barrel on a sandbag rest. Holding low, I then fired three rounds of Remington Premier TSS containing 13/16 ounce of No. 9 shot from the under barrel, and the average was 144 pellets in the 10-inch circle of the target with 38 in head/neck killing spots. With striking velocities of the two being the same, a No. 9 TSS pellet delivers as much energy as a No. 5 lead pellet, so if the targets I shot had been drumsticks and giblets rather than paper, dinner would have been on the table. During all the choke-switching at the gun club, the little wrench vanished, but a 25-cent piece just happened to be in my pocket, and it proved to be an excellent substitute.

Fresh from its box the gun was a bit stiff, so I applied a light coat of Shooter’s Choice gun grease to the hinge points of the frame and barrels. That along with several boxes of fired shells later, I could tuck the stock beneath my arm, trip the top lever with that hand, and by their weight alone the barrels would swing down far enough to replace empties with loaded rounds.

Due to the affordable price of this latest Stevens gun from Savage, it should rest comfortably within most budgets, yet fit, finish, and overall quality are exceptionally good. The frames of 555 guns are gauge-specific in size, with the .410 measuring a mere 2.25 inches tall and 1.25 inches thick at its one-hand carry point. When grasping it, my fingers wrap completely around the receiver area and actually overlap by half an inch or so. As I discovered decades ago, nothing else carries in the field like a good .410.

STEVENS 555 SPORTING SPECS

• MANUFACTURER: Savage Arms savagearms.com
• TYPE: Over-under shotgun
• GAUGE: .410 Bore, 3.0-in. chambers
• CARTRIDGE CAPACITY: 2 rounds
• BARRELS: 28 in.
• OVERALL LENGTH: 47.5 in.
• WEIGHT, EMPTY: 5.88 lbs.
• STOCK: Turkish walnut
• LENGTH OF PULL: 14.5 in.
• FINISH: Matte blue metal, satin wood
• SIGHTS: Brass mid-bead, fiber-optic front
• TRIGGER: 5.94-lb. pull first barrel, 6.75-lb. pull second barrel (as tested)
• SAFETY: Browning-style H-pattern slide
• MSRP: $989

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