OK, I'll go against the flow here. This is my personal experience and I know others' opinions differ.

I would take the Browning Gold over the Benelli. In fact, I did. I owned a SBE Several years ago. I just had to have one. Sold a perfect Browning BLR 243 to help pay for the Benelli, dang I wish I hadn't done that. The one thing I absolutely loved about the Benelli is when it came to cleaning the gun. I don't think anyone can argue about that.

But, the gun I had would jam quite frequently. It was very well maintained/cleaned. I did not trust that gun at all. Pull up for a pair of ducks and no second shot. I hunted with others that swore by their Benelli. They said they never jammed............ Well, I hunted with them and I witnessed more than one jam. The response was always something like, "Well, I didn't clean it properly after the last hunt." Or, "I didn't have it shouldered properly."

I sold it and bought a 3 1/2" Browning Gold Stalker. It shoots everything except the Winchester and Federal bulk boxes from Walmart. I keep it well maintained also and have no problems. Since I bought mine, my brother bought a 3 1/2" Gold with MOSG camo and I bought my son a 3" Gold Stalker.

Having said that, the Benelli is absolute KING where I live. A huge percentage of waterfowl hunters where I live have Benellis and absolutely wouldn't have anything else.

So, each must decide for themself. You may want to peak in over at shotgunworld.com to read up on these guns.

One thing you may consider is just going with a 3" gun instead of the 3 1/2". Personally, I would buy a 3" Gold for myself if I had it to do over again.

Oh, one last thing. I haven't looked at prices lately, but it always really made me shake my head about the price of the Benellis. One of my friends is a diehard Auto 5 guy.He bought an Auto 5 stalker at the same time that I bought my Benelli. His was several hundred dollars cheaper. If you take them both apart and look at which one was more difficult to make (i.e. should cost more), I was amazed that the Auto 5 didn't cost 3 times more than the Benelli.

Anyway, good luck.