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The furniture is of Turkish walnut and features a fair amount of figure which I found surprising for a shotgun in this price range. The butt stock features a 14-3/8 inch length of pull and 2-1/8 inch drop at the comb. A fairly thin rubber butt plate caps the butt stock, and 18 line-per-inch cut checkering graces the open pistol grip. The Schnabel forearm also features 18 lines-per-inch cut checkering to match the grip area and provides suitable traction and a nice bit of styling to the gun.
While nicely figured I found that the satin oil finish left something to be desired as the surface was noticeably porous indicating a lack of filling and the finish seemed to be fairly thin. That’s not to say it’s a poor quality finish, but a bit of time with some Formby’s Low Gloss Tung Oil and a some 0000 steel wool would make a big difference.
The overall length of the 12-gauge model I received is approximately 44-7/8 inches and it weighed in at just over six pounds. MSRP on the 555 is listed at $692.00 at the time of this writing.
Field Notes:
My first outing with the Stevens 555 was for a little informal clay’s shooting, and right off the bat I was breaking birds and I found the 555 to shoulder and point very naturally. The drop at the comb was just right and made obtaining the sight picture down the ventilated rib a quick and thoughtless task. Recoil with the 2-3/4 inch 1-ounce target loads was very mild and less than I was expecting giving the guns light weight. After a box and a half of birds and roughly 150 shells I called it a day.
The third outing with the Stevens was more casual clay shooting like the first in which I put another 200 shells or so through the gun averaging a 90-95% hit rate. It actually got to the point that it was getting boring so I stated counting to three-Mississippi before dropping the hammer on the birds to let them get out a little further and make it a little more challenging.
I had planned on taking the Stevens out for several days of dove hunting, but bad weather, poor timing and other obligations limited me to just one afternoon. The hunt started off pretty slow, but the action picked up around 6pm when a neighboring farmer began harvesting an adjacent corn field. After that it didn’t take long for me and my hunting partner to stack up nine birds.
Mechanically the Stevens 555 worked flawlessly other than one persistent detail which I’ll discuss below. The action was naturally stiff being new, but not overly so and it wore in fairly quickly. The trigger has a nice crisp let-off and the pull weight is right where it should be for a shotgun. The safety selector moves smoothly between the two detents and wasn’t overly stiff or loud like the safety on the 512 Gold Wing was. The barrel selector was equally smooth and stayed where you put it, so no issues there either.
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