With gas prices and the economy being the way they are, I find myself sorting from lowest to highest a lot more often. In doing so, I recently discovered the Century Arms Centurion Survivor. As a fan of alliteration, the gun name caught my attention; as a fan of low prices, that did too. In fact, I can keep listing things I am a fan of that made this gun appeal to me:
- It is a shotgun
- It is a survival gun
- It is ugly
- It is weird
- It folds
Those are all things I am a fan of. I have never claimed to have good taste in guns. The Centurion Survivor is a folding .410 shotgun, which I purchased for $99.99. If you are a fan of the Chiappa Badger series, this gun looks identical to the Chiappa Big Badger. The Badger series is Turkish-made, and so is the Centurion Survivor.
Design and Features
This single-shot, folding .410 is not exactly identical to the Big Badger. Chiappa adds a cheek rest, a more robust recoil pad, and M-LOK slots along the handguard. The Centurion Survivor lacks these extras. It does, however, come with Picatinny rails at the top and bottom of the micro-sized handguard and a three-shell holder inside the stock.
Simplicity is the key to the gun design. It lacks any form of manual safety; users will rely on the half cock position of the hammer. The controls are a trigger and a breakdown lever. That is it.
Up front, we have a red high-visibility sight that tops off the 18-inch barrel. The Big Badger lists a 20-inch barrel, so the Survivor gives us a slightly shorter firearm. The gun’s overall length is 35.8 inches opened and 21.3 inches folded. It weighs a mere 3.3 pounds. We get a cylinder bore choke, and the gun can chamber up to a 3-inch shotgun shell.
Cheap and Useful
Obviously, the idea behind the aptly named Survivor is to provide a minimalist survival shotgun that can be thrown into your camping gear, your boat, your ATV, or whatever, and serve as a simple yet effective firearm for all manner of purposes.
If you are stuck in a Bear Grylls situation, now you have a gun that can kill deer, rabbits, birds, squirrels, and maybe something even bigger with the right load. For most of us, this can be an effective working gun. A gun you can keep in the truck to peg coyotes and hogs to do your rural neighborly duty.
The Survivor is cheap enough that when you beat it to pieces, you will not be so heartbroken. As a .410, you can shove a lot of different things down the barrel, including barrel inserts to convert the caliber. I am a fan of the Chaszel rifled adapters, which produce a variety of options including 9mm, .22LR, .380 ACP, .32 S&W Long, and .38 Special.
I have a rifled model for the .32 S&W Long I use in .410s. It keeps recoil light and gives me superb accuracy. It is perfect for small to moderate-sized game; with good shot placement, you could easily take down a coyote.
At the Range With the Survivor
The first thing I did was load a 3-inch .410 000 buckshot Remington round, sending five big pellets. The second thing I did was regret it. Okay, I am being a little facetious, but hot damn, this thing’s recoil surprised me. I am used to .410s having light, dandy recoil; this thing packs a bit more sting, landing somewhere near 20 gauge territory.
The hard recoil pad and lightweight design do not do you any favors. The pattern was not exactly impressive either. At 15 yards, the pattern was a vertical string from the top to the bottom of an 8-inch circle. Winchester 2.5-inch buckshot patterned much better, with the pellets being about 4 inches wide in a vertical string.
The birdshot patterns were fine for the gun’s purpose. At 15 yards, it was 10 inches wide with 7.5 shot. For close-range small game, it will work. It is certainly not a hit them in the head turkey gun, but I can kill a tree rat with that type of pattern.
Performance Notes: Hot, Hot, Hot
The trigger is quite short and rather nice. Surprisingly so for a Turkish shotgun. Every time the hammer dropped, the gun fired. The system has an extractor but lacks an ejector; the folding action pushes the round out easily, making it simple to remove and reload.
As you can imagine, the dinky handguard gets hot quickly. It is not a gun meant for extended firing sessions. The handguard gets hot after about 10 rounds; after 20, I wanted to put it down and let it cool.
The shell holder is a great idea in theory, but it would consistently drop a round when fired. It is hardly secure. Luckily, shotgun shells mostly come in bright colors, so it would be easy to find them in the wild.
Specifications
- Barrel Length: 18 inches
- Overall Length: 35.8 inches
- Folded Length: 21.3 inches
- Weight: 3.3 pounds
- Chambering: .410 (2.5 and 3-inch)
- MSRP: $139.99 (Street: $99)
Accuracy: ***
No POI/POA issues, but it can throw some wide buckshot patterns. Make sure to pattern your defensive loads.
Ergonomics: **
The controls are easy to reach, but the wire stock and dinky handguard are doing you zero favors in the comfort department.
Reliability: *****
I fired 150 rounds of mixed .410 without a single failure to fire or any difficulty extracting spent cartridges.
Overall ***
For $99, this thing is exactly what it should be: a weird little folding shotgun that just works. Toss it in the truck, forget about it, and know it’ll be there when you need it.
