
Traditionally, the experience of buying a bespoke shotgun from a U.S. The Bespoke Shotgun Buyer’s Guide Ordering a bespoke shotgun is actually a fairly simple process. If you need custom measurements, it could easily cost you another $1,000.” Now that same gun starts, without any upgrades or custom stock dimensions, at $5,000. 4, custom made to their measurements for $2,500.

When I first began selling bespoke AYA shotguns, a customer could order an AYA No. English guns were rarely, if ever, made simply to stock in inventory of a gun store for potential resale someday. For those who could afford a bespoke shotgun made in England, a custom-made gun was the standard, the fitting of the stock to the client being a paramount ingredient. The Italian gun makers have traditionally had a smaller role in answering the demand for bespoke shotguns. “Most of the traditional demand is answered by the Spanish gun makers like AYA, Arrieta, Garbi, Grulla, et.al. “There has always been a good demand in the U.S. But Bryan Bilinski, another 40-year veteran of the shotgun business and president of Fieldsports in Traverse City, Michigan, believes the bespoke market is alive and well. Although AYA has experienced a resurgence in America, it is still tough to envision the landscape of bespoke shotguns-ranging from $5,000 to well into six figures-growing at an exponential rate. The Bespoke Shotgun Market Through the YearsĪt the time, I thought that I had received that gun in the twilight of the bespoke shotgun market. What Is a Bespoke Shotgun? In order for a shotgun to be considered bespoke, it must have been hand-made. In recognition of the fundamental idea of a bespoke shotgun being a legacy piece, this gun will never leave my family.

To be fair, I could never afford a shotgun like this this was the result of a business relationship for which I am profoundly grateful. Everything from the case hardening to the finish of the wood was designed to my preferences. The gun was fit to my measurements, built with the wood I had hand-selected, and engraved with my initials. 2 sidelock shotgun built on a Holland & Holland design. With the reverence I held for this parcel, while any normal person would have shrugged, I may have been foaming at the mouth. There was nothing particularly revealing about it after the nine-month journey that had taken me to Eibar, Spain, and now an unsuspecting gun shop in God-knows-where New Hampshire. The box sitting on the glass counter in front of me looked basic enough.
