This definitely isn’t your grandpa’s A5 that you envied for years while sitting in the blind or walking the hunting fields with him. However, it very well may be the Sweet Sixteen that your grandkids will envy just as much.
The new A5 Wicked Wing Sweet Sixteen dressed in Mossy Oak Shadow Grass Habitat furniture has come a long way from grandpa’s hard kicking A5 humpback. It’s designed with the serious waterfowl hunter in mind. The Wicked Wing is built to blend in and remain unseen while you’re hunting, and can withstand the elements while providing soft shooting, hard-hitting performance.
The composite stock and handguard won’t absorb moisture and be damaged by wild weather, and at the same time the Burnt Bronze Cerakote protects the receiver while looking good to you and out of sight of your prey.
The Wicked Wings 26” or 28” barrel is chromed-line for long life, corrosion resistance and ease of maintenance, and is finished in a Burnt Bronze Cerakote as well.
The new A5 is still recoil operated but it’s not the same system of years gone by. The Kinematic Drive System is designed to be fast cycling and soft shooting. Browning is so confident in the gun they have a 100,000-round or 5-year guarantee. It may take several generations to reach that 100,000 rounds, but it would be good times.
The Wicked Wing comes with three extended Invector choke tubes that look like goose leg bans, very cool touch. The oversize bolt release is large enough that operating with gloves will not be a problem
Specifications
- Gauge 16
- Barrel Length 26” or 28”
- Weight 7.3 or 7.5 lbs
- Magazine Capacity (4) 2 ¾” shells
- Stock Composite
- Receiver Aluminum
- Trigger Gold plated
- MSRP $2,229.99
Browning has several models of new 16 gauge shotguns. The Wicked Wing above is made for being out in the elements and put to hard use; some of the other models stand out as a bit fancier.
The A5 Ultimate Sweet Sixteen’s below are finished in satin nickel with brushed nickel accents, nice Turkish walnut wood. They are truly sweet shotguns. They have lightweight aluminum alloy receivers and both the 26” and 28” barreled guns weigh less than 6 pounds.
They might be pretty but I would love to take one of them quail or pheasant hunting. I like functional camo guns but the Ultimate reminds me more of my grandpas. The MSRP on the Ultimate Sweet Sixteen is $2,259.99
For more information on the new Browning A5’s, check them out Here
What a joke. John Moses Browning would would flip in his grave if he saw the garbage they’re stamping his name on nowadays. I live in southeast La where we hunt ducks hard. I hunt with original Japanese made Auto-5 stalkers because they and a few other older guns are the only ones that hold up for decades. Being a hobby gunsmith, I’m constantly trying to help people keep these newer overpriced pieces of garbage running reliably after several years of hunting saltwater marshes. If you think these new plastic and aluminum pieces of junk will be able to be passed down to your grandkids you are sadly mistaken. the duck-hunters I know get about 10 years tops out of guns like this and super black eagles and then they start to give nothing but problems from worn out tolerances. Like a long gone fantastic old school gunsmith taught me decades ago…we live in a throw away society and most new guns are meant to be used and thrown away. Show me a new made inertia gun that lasts past 10-15 years, and I’ll show you one that hasn’t been duck-hunted with much. My nearly 100 year old Auto-5’s that look worn out still chug along perfectly and can keep being repaired when needed.
While I applaud their efforts in the 16 ga. realm, it is enough of a stretch for folk with long-fond memories to name it A-5 but “Sweet Sixteen”?…… Hard NO!
And, gloves or not – couldn’t they have designed a less….. *agricultural* bolt release?
In the end, I understand that I am not, never have been and likely never will be a customer to anything marketed *extreme* but, I’d pay twice as much for the real thing.
Intimating that this would EVER be a *legacy-gun* like the original is the greatest stretch in the write-up.
Build the gun, name it independently with perhaps a nod to lineage and move on but, pandering to nostalgia while missing almost every aspect that informs that same nostalgia is a bit silly
Todd.
I would love to have another 16ga and the Browning Sweet 16 might fill the bill but not with camo on it (for me.) As far as ammo availability what ammo is available these days. I’ve found more 28ga than 20ga with 12 obviously being the most abundant, but even that is hard to come by.
This Wicked Wing Sweet Sixteen sickens me. What a perversion of a great American tradition! To start from such a place of art and to arrive at such an ugly grotesquerie, it boggles the mind. A 16 ga chambering almost feels out of place in camo plastic stock with the ugly anodized green metal. Why a 16 in such a modern shotgun? Don’t get me wrong, my favourite shotgun is a side by side Fox 16, but if you are getting one of these new plastic tinker toys, 20 gas are much more practical – the same load fits in a 20 ga 3” shell as a 16 ga 2 3/4” shell, the 20 ga shells sell for about half what the 16 ga shells do, and all 16 ga shells are 2 3/4” (or shorter, what was the old chambering? 2 9/16” or something bizarre like that?)
The wood and blue with stainless receiver is pretty enough but it is hard not to compare them against the older models. John Moses Browning forgive us; your children have lost their way.
I’m fine with it. That model obviously is targeted to waterfowl hunters, who require tough barrel finishes and camo stocks. There are traditional looking models for other audiences still. I just think it’s cool as hell that they’re producing 16s again. I wish more companies would make 28s too. Super underrated shotguns.