Italian Excellence

The Fabarm Elos N2 RS Sporting — The First Gun You’ll Buy, And The Last You’ll Need

Picture the moment the sport gets its hooks into you. You have shot a few rounds — a borrowed gun, a hired one, a quiet afternoon at the club — and somewhere between the smashed clays and the missed ones, you were caught. Now you want your own gun. The first real one. And you are standing in front of a daunting question: where on earth do you start?

It is an intimidating aisle. Names you half-recognise, prices from “surely not” to “absolutely not,” and a quiet worry running underneath all of it — buy the wrong gun, and in a year you are selling it at a loss and starting the search again. You do not want a toy you will outgrow by next season. You do not want to remortgage the house. You want the gun that is genuinely right to begin on.

The Fabarm Elos N2 RS Sporting is, we would argue, exactly that gun. It is the all-new, fine-tuned evolution of Fabarm’s acclaimed Elos N2 Sporting — Tribore HP deep-drilled barrels, a forged-steel action, an adjustable comb so it fits you from day one, four extended Exis HP competition chokes, every barrel proofed to 1630 bar. Italian-made in Brescia, and marked out by its blue accenting on a black satin action.

It is a gun built to flatter a first-timer and quietly satisfy a club shooter — the rare sort of gun you grow into, not out of. From $3,590, in stock now, in 28″, 30″ or 32″ and right or left hand. Call the team, and let’s start your Fabarm journey.

Is This The Perfect First Sporting Clays Gun?

The gun that quietly ends the ‘where do I start?’ spiral.

Every sporting clays shooter remembers their first proper gun. It is the gun that taught them to read a target, to trust a swing, to call “pull” without a knot in the stomach. Choose it well and the sport quietly opens up in front of you. Choose it badly and you spend a whole season fighting the tool instead of learning the game.

A first sporting gun has a genuinely hard job. It has to fit a shooter who does not yet know their own measurements. It has to be forgiving enough to build confidence, yet good enough that an improving score is the shooter’s doing and not the gun’s ceiling. And it has to last — because nothing sours the journey faster than discovering, twelve months in, that you have already outgrown the gun you just paid for.

The RS Sporting answers all three. Its adjustable comb means it fits you now, and keeps fitting as your mount settles and your style matures. Its Tribore HP barrels and forged-steel action mean it shoots like a far dearer gun, so the day you plateau, that plateau is yours and not the gun’s limit. And it is built to a real competition standard — this is not a stepping stone you discard in a year, it is a gun a club-level shooter is genuinely glad to own for the long haul.

So — is it the perfect entry point? For a great many first-time sporting clays shooters, our honest answer is yes. The rest of this page is the case for why.

Elos N2 Sporting Vs Elos N2 RS Sporting — What Changed

The RS is not a different gun. It is the N2 Sporting, fine-tuned by the people who shoot it.

Fabarm’s Elos N2 Sporting earned a strong reputation as a great deal of competition gun for the money. The RS Sporting is its evolution — and the first thing to understand is what Fabarm chose to keep. The RS retains every performance feature of the standard N2 Sporting: the same Tribore HP deep-drilled barrels, the same forged-steel action, the same adjustable comb, the same four Exis HP competition chokes, the same 1630 bar proof, the same adjustable Racing trigger and 10–8mm rib. Mechanically, the two guns are twins. Nothing that makes the N2 shoot well was touched.

What changed is how the gun feels. Fabarm gave the RS a refined stock and a new fore-end. The standard N2 wears a tulip fore-end; the RS wears a fuller, rounded fore-end that sits more naturally in the leading hand and lets you move the gun more assertively. The pistol grip was reshaped — made a touch deeper, with a steeper turn-down and a thicker palm swell — so the gun beds into your shoulder and your hand locks onto it with real confidence.

Fabarm also rebalanced the gun. The RS carries a little more weight than the standard N2 — 3.55 to 3.70 kg against the N2’s 3.40 to 3.50 kg — and that weight is placed more deliberately between the hands. The payoff is a smoother, more controlled swing and noticeably softer recoil over a long day on the course. And there is a visual tell: the RS is finished with blue accenting on its black satin action, where the standard N2 Sporting carries red — the quickest way to tell the two apart on a rack.

Here is the honest part — the part a good gun shop should tell you. The standard Elos N2 Sporting is still an excellent gun, and it starts from $3,299 — comfortably below the RS Sporting’s $3,590. If budget is the deciding factor, the standard N2 is a genuinely smart buy: you keep the entire performance core — barrels, action, adjustable comb, chokes, proof — and what you give up is the refined stock, the rounded fore-end and the rebalanced handling, not the way the gun shoots.

So the choice is clean. Tighter budget? The standard Elos N2 Sporting will serve you well — ask the Gun Bar team. Able to stretch a few hundred dollars further? The RS hands you the stock, fore-end and balance a modern sporting shooter actually wants — and in our view that handling refinement is worth every dollar of the difference.

Tribore HP — The Barrel Is Where Fabarm Spends The Money

Italian-made and sensibly priced. Yes, both — and the barrel is where it shows.

Fabarm is, before it is anything else, a barrel-maker — and it has been one in Brescia, the historic heart of Italian gunmaking, since 1900. How good? The proof is a fact from inside the trade. Caesar Guerini, the prestige marque Fabarm shares ownership with, builds guns that sell for many times the price of an RS Sporting — and when Caesar Guerini needs barrels, it does not make its own. It has Fabarm make them. The barrel on this gun shares its bloodline with barrels fitted to guns costing five figures.

It begins with how the tubes are made. Fabarm deep-drills every barrel from a solid bar of chrome-molybdenum steel — the most demanding and most expensive way to make a gun tube, and the best. Fabarm’s two largest competitors reserve deep drilling for their custom-shop flagships only. Fabarm uses it on every gun it builds, this RS Sporting included.

Then there is the bore: Tribore HP. Sporting shooters chase a clean, even pattern, and the usual route to one is an over-bored barrel — widen the bore, cut the friction, lift the distribution. But over-boring quietly costs you penetration: the same gas now fills a larger volume, pressure falls, and the shot leaves slower. A prettier pattern bought with a weaker hit. Tribore HP refuses that trade. The barrel runs an over-bored section at 18.70mm for low friction and a clean pattern — then, ahead of it, a long 205mm conical section that gently narrows the bore back to 18.40mm. Squeeze a moving column of gas into a narrowing space and, by the Venturi principle, it accelerates — the same reason pinching a garden hose makes the water leap. That taper hands the shot its speed, and its penetration, straight back.

An extra-long forcing cone eases the shot column on its way and softens recoil into your shoulder — and that detail deserves a final word. Beretta, nobody’s idea of a budget house, reserves its long-forcing-cone Steelium Pro barrels for the flagship DT11, a gun that costs a small fortune. Fabarm builds the same long-forcing-cone principle into every Tribore HP barrel as standard. On a gun starting at $3,590, that is genuinely remarkable.

Tested To 1630 Bar — And Ready For Steel

Two things most gun makers cannot say. Fabarm says both.

Every Italian shotgun is proof-tested by law — pressure-tested for safety — at the C.I.P. proof house in Gardone Val Trompia, to 1320 bar. Fabarm volunteers for far more. It is the only maker to have agreed an exclusive additional protocol with that proof house: every Fabarm barrel is also tested to 1630 bar, a deliberate overpressure well beyond the legal requirement — and every gun, your RS Sporting included, leaves the factory with its own 1630 bar certificate. You are not asked to take a maker’s word that the barrels are strong. You are handed the certificate.

That strength buys a benefit most shooters have never been offered. Almost every other manufacturer restricts high-performance steel shot to choke constrictions no tighter than Modified. The RS Sporting does not share that ceiling. Its Exis HP chokes are cleared by Fabarm for high-performance steel shot right through to Long (0.7) and Xtreme (0.9) — reassuring for any shooter who ever shoots where steel is required, and a genuine future-proofing as non-toxic loads spread.

The RS Sporting is supplied with four Exis HP extended competition chokes — Short, Medium, Long and Xtreme. Each is built longer, with a hyperbolic curved profile, so the shot column is squeezed gently and progressively rather than against a hard edge. The result is the clean, even, dependable patterns a sporting shooter lives or dies by. Always use each choke as Fabarm marks it; the Gun Bar team can help you set up.

An Adjustable Stock For A Shooter Still Finding Their Form

A clay gun that does not fit cannot be shot well — and fit is the fastest way for a developing shooter to improve.

The single biggest thing holding a developing clay shooter back is rarely talent. It is a gun that does not fit. If the comb sits too low you shoot under the bird; too high and you float over it; and you can lose a whole season fighting the gun instead of reading the target. The RS Sporting removes that obstacle from the first day.

It is built on a pistol-grip stock with an adjustable comb. Raise it, lower it, move it for cast until the gun places the pattern exactly where your eye looks — then leave it set. With a 377mm length of pull and measured drop at comb and heel, the RS Sporting comes to the shoulder the same way every single time. And the same mount, every time, is the quiet foundation a good score is built upon.

The RS-specific touches earn their keep here. The deeper pistol grip and thicker palm swell give your trigger hand a firm, repeatable hold, and the fuller rounded fore-end gives your leading hand real, confident control — so you guide the gun rather than wrestle it. The extra weight Fabarm placed between the hands settles the swing and smooths the recoil over a long round of sporting clays.

The Racing trigger is adjustable and selective — pick your barrel, and enjoy a crisp, clean break with no creep and no surprise. It is the kind of trigger a developing shooter quickly learns to trust and then stops noticing, which is the highest thing a trigger can do.

Silver Pigeon, You Say? Look What The Fabarm Packs In

More shotgun than your budget ordered. Let’s line it up and prove it.

When a new sporting shooter asks for a recommendation, one name comes up more than any other: the Beretta Silver Pigeon. And rightly so. It is a benchmark — a proven, beautifully made over-under that has introduced more shooters to clay target sports than almost any gun alive. We mention it here not to dismiss it, but because measuring the Fabarm against a gun you already respect is the clearest way to see what the RS Sporting actually gives you.

The headline difference is fit. The entry Silver Pigeon I is built on a fixed stock — its comb is set at the factory and stays there. The RS Sporting includes an adjustable comb as standard. For a developing shooter that is not a minor detail: it is the difference between a gun you tune to suit your face and eye, and a gun you must contort yourself to suit. A fitted gun is shot better, learned faster, and enjoyed more.

Then there is what comes in the case. The RS Sporting arrives with four extended Exis HP competition chokes, an adjustable Racing trigger, deep-drilled Tribore HP barrels and a 1630 bar overpressure proof. Spec a Beretta up to a comparable competition standard — adjustable comb, extended competition chokes, an adjustable trigger — and you are typically looking at a step up the range, and a step up in price, to reach it.

None of this makes the Silver Pigeon a poor choice — it is an excellent gun, and its reputation and resale are deservedly strong. It is simply that, dollar for dollar at the entry to sporting clays, the Fabarm Elos N2 RS Sporting packs more of the gun you will actually want into the price you actually pay. That is the whole case, and it is an honest one.

The Chokes Question — Factory Exis HP, Or Teague Precision?

Your RS Sporting arrives with four good chokes. There is still a smart upgrade to know about.

Every RS Sporting comes with four Exis HP extended competition chokes — Short, Medium, Long and Xtreme — genuinely good chokes, and enough to shoot the gun well across sporting and skeet straight from the case.

But here is a truth worth knowing before you buy. A gun maker’s real craft is the action and the barrels — the lock-up, the bore, the balance — and at that, Fabarm is exceptional. Choke-making is a different specialism entirely. For Teague Precision Chokes, choke-making is not one component among many: it is the whole craft, refined over decades to a standard a factory choke is simply not built to chase.

Teague are renowned for precision thin-wall chokes — machined to exacting tolerances, delivering consistent, repeatable patterns shot after shot. Fit a set of Teague chokes to the Tribore HP barrels of an RS Sporting and you have the best of both worlds: Fabarm’s barrel pedigree, and a choke specialist’s lifetime of doing one thing supremely well.

The smart moment to make that call is now, at the point of purchase — have your RS Sporting and a matched set of Teague Precision Chokes leave together, set up as one package. Speak to the Gun Bar team about specifying Teague chokes with your order.

Real Competition Engineering, At The Entry Price

Everything a serious sporting gun needs — nothing a first gun should do without.

28, 30 Or 32 Inch — Pick Your Swing

Three barrel lengths, right or left hand. Pricing varies a little by configuration — and the team can help if you are unsure.

Fabarm Elos N2 RS Sporting — Full Specifications

The complete specification for the Elos N2 RS Sporting, as published by Fabarm. The 28″, 30″ and 32″ share one platform — they differ only in barrel length and the handling character that follows from it.

Sporting, Skeet — It Isn’t Fussy

The same gun, equally at home wherever the targets fly.

In Stock Now — Call The Team

A gun this versatile, at this price, does not gather dust.

The good news is simple: the Fabarm Elos N2 RS Sporting is in stock at Gun Bar now — in 28″, 30″ and 32″, right hand and left. There is no allocation queue to join; there is a gun ready to be set up and sent to you.

A capable, well-priced sporting gun is exactly what a large share of new and improving clay shooters are looking for, so stock does move. If you have decided the RS Sporting is your gun, the move is to secure it while it is on the shelf.

The best first step, especially if this is your first sporting gun, is to call the Gun Bar team. Tell them your experience, your build, the disciplines you want to shoot and the budget you are working with. They will help you choose barrel length and hand, talk through whether the standard Elos N2 Sporting or the RS suits you better, and explain whether a Teague choke upgrade is worth it for you. Real advice from real shooters — before you spend a dollar.

One Family Of Italian Shotguns

The RS Sporting is the entry point. The Fabarm range climbs from here.

Fabarm Elos N2 RS Sporting — Common Questions

Quick answers to the questions we hear most. Anything not covered? Call the team on 1800 GUNBAR.