Well I have both my Winchester is the X3 long beard. I have patterned it and it did outstanding with hand loaded TSS. I have not hunted with it. I can tell you that the Sa459 has been hunted and killed a bunch of gobblers. It is lighter and feels better than the X3. I will be hunting the X3 this year and then will know which I like better. And the sa459 was around 630.00 where the X3 was 1200.00. One thing though the sa459 had a horrible trigger 8 pounds and 1/4 of creep. Local gunsmith fixed all that though.