At the NRA Annual Meeting something caught my eye at the UTAS booth. I will be honest I am not a fan of the UTS-15 when it comes to bullpup shotguns. However UTAS has something relatively new that I missed at SHOT Show last January. It is their XTR-12. It is an AR styled shotgun. In fact I would not even bother calling it “AR Style” it is an AR shotgun.

According to the guys at UTAS, the XTR-12 uses a DPMS AR-10 lower. In fact, you can get a DPMS .308 upper slap it on the XTR-12 lower and it will work.

Since the lower is a DPMS AR-10 lower, that means you can use any trigger you want and swap out any other controls you prefer, like extended mag releases and grips.

UTAS said that this shotgun is direct impingement. You can see the size of the gas block under the handguard.

Due to the gas block size, you are limited on choices for handguard options. However what comes on the XTR-12 is really not that bad at all.

Below is the massive bolt.

They recommend using 1&1/8th Oz loads when shooting birdshot, or anything 1250fps.

The XTR-12 come with 5rd magazines but they make 10rd metal magazines and retail for $69 each.

The XTR-12 barrel is externally threaded for chokes or muzzle brakes. I am not sure what the thread pitch is but I suspect it is similar to the Vepr12/Saiga 12 thread pitch.

For an additional $200 you can send your upper in and have the barrel swapped out for an internally threaded barrel. For your $200 you will get your externally threaded barrel back along with the upper. It will come with five Benelli Cryo chokes. While they do not thread the outside of this choked barrel, the reps at UTAS did mention that 3Gunners are having their barrels threaded for muzzle brakes.

The XTR-12 retails for only $1099 for the all black version. It has last round bolt hold and as I said earlier it is compatible with DPMS .308 uppers. UTAS will be coming out with a combo set that will have both the 12Ga and .308 uppers as well as magazines to feed both guns. The combo set will retail for $1800.