Weekend Shotgun Fun

Bill (Yosemite Sam) and I finally got out to a trap field last Saturday. It’s taken us a while to do so. You see, we’re both cold-wussies and it’s been cold up here in New Hampshire. Yes, we’ve had a few nice weekends between the last snow fall and now, but other things have interceded including visiting handgun ranges, gun shows and stores, and doing other gunnie (sometimes not) stuff.

Despite our bad weather phobia (and this weekend was no prize with temperatures in the forties, cloudy on Saturday, and rainy on Sunday), we do love our shooting weekends. We took two new shotguns this time; Bill’s Benelli Montefeltro semi-auto shotgun and my coach gun. Of course, my Winchester 101 came along for the ride. We also packed a lot of shotgun shells and clays.

So off we went to our favorite trap field and enjoyed ourselves immensely. Despite our too long hiatus, busting clays was like riding a bike. After one or two wobbles, it all comes back. Bill’s Benelli worked flawlessly as we expected. He bought it in February and this is the first time he’s shot it and after a few misses, he got used to it and powdered clays.

I shot a round of 25 clays with my little coach gun. The gun is much lighter than I’m used to and I feared its lightness would cause me to check my swing too soon and thus miss birds. Instead, it proved as accurate as my Winchester 101.

I did miss one target with the coach gun when I forgot to take off the safety (unlike my Winchester, the coach gun’s safety resets to safe when you reload). It’s a strange feeling to pull the trigger and not have it go boom when it worked so well just a few seconds before. Proof once again that perfect practice equals perfect performance and perhaps a lesson that one shouldn’t switch guns on the same day.

Now here's something to ponder. I spent about about $700.00 less for the coach gun than I did for the Winchester. I shot both with about the same accuracy rate. Now is this something that "makes you go hmmmm" or what?

We ran out of clays long before we ran out of shells even after gleaning a handful of intact clays from the unused skeet field. Our shoulders are still a little sore and we have many hulls to reload. That’s cool, I like reloading (most of the time). We’re planning another visit to the trap field soon. Hope your weekends were just as fun.