doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com What are your guns for SXS shoots?

I'm afraid I don't have a lot of choice these days, only having two guns.
I don't shoot very often either ,but if I go out , I like my Greener Jones U/L action pigeon hammer.
I get a kick out of the looks I get when I open or close it,lol
cheers
Franc

According to where you go. A NSCA registered shoot will give cash back to class, and you can win a concurrent too, if you qualify. For me, that's Veteran concurrent. Sometimes at bigger shoots, a gun will be top prize. I have also won a beautiful belt buckle, which I actually wear. I have won gift certificates from Brileys, Cabela's and Bass Pro Shops.

At most S x S only shoots I have been to the prizes are different, even unique. At the Fall Southern S x S they used to give trophies made from the breech end, or the muzzle end, of S x S barrels mounted on a base. I won a set of Grant ejector barrels, no. 2 of a matched pair, made into a very nice trophy this way. The paperweights from Galazan have been given as prizes.

I don't go to shoots all the time, but when I go I expect to win. I don't mean to sound egotistical, but if you don't have self confidence, you never will. Often I don't, but I believe I can, and will, if I do what I know to do. Doesn't always work out though, of course. I do it to have fun, too. I identify with what John R. said, hitting them is a lot more fun than missing. I had a shooting lesson with Bill McGuire just yesterday afternoon to try and pick up a few more targets per round.

We are not all wired alike, obviously. If we were this would be a boring place. We all shoot to have fun, it's just we have differing views of what fun is, I guess. I am a competitive shooter, always competing against my last best score, trying to better myself. I push myself to improve, and when I do it is huge fun for me, and satisfying. I honestly hate missing. If I got to where I never missed I would lose interest, I know, but .............. that's not likely to ever happen, eh? I am a paradox ............ I am never satisfied with a miss, but I hope I can never approach perfection. The challenge is what I dearly love ............. that, and watching clay birds literally turn to dust.

SRH

Stan, Our motivations are entirely different.
I am of the opinion that no shooter should forgo the pleasure of playing with their toys for fear of being beaten.
Yet it is obvious that men do just that. The shoot lists are filled with the one and done's.

There's so much more to this hobby than endless competition.

A person should be able to just grab their favorite shotgun and go have a good time.

The shoots that list participants only by number must have a reason for it.

Gentlemen: Before I began competing full-time in matters of business at a time that now seems to have preceded the end of our last Ice Age, which was a little after that time when as a young teen, I bought a "Special Trap" model Remington 3200 in 12-bore. A beautiful, impressive and well-engineered gun, and a thoroughbred competition piece, to be admired by all in my unfailing hands. As an avid sports-kid and club and field shooter since the age of eight, I had read with appreciation about its excellence in the shooting press and how advanced it was over its predecessor, the elder model 32 Remington, and even its more expensive doppelganger, the foreign-made Krieghoff.

I took my prize gun to the local gun club and found disappointment. No matter how much I squirmed or twisted into position, or how firmly I mashed the side of my face into the stock and pressed my cheekbone down onto the comb, I missed almost everything at which I fired. Dumbfounded, I took emergency instruction from other shooters, which provided no improvement in my performance. In hapless despair and still trusting in divine intervention, I took the Remington to the family gunsmith, a classic-looking elderly man wearing a machinist's skull cap, who peered at his work through thick-lens-ed jeweler's glasses with several other thick lenses affixed by metal limbs to the frame of each eyepiece, and had ungainly hearing aids brandishing from both ears, presumably the unhappy result of not wearing ear protection over many decades of shooting (probably competitively).

The gunsmith skillfully reduced the butt-stock's comb height, I think it was 1/8-inch, and removed the factory's rubber pad and replaced it with a plastic butt-plate. The length of pull was then 14-1/4 inches, if memory serves. I remember him muttering to himself as he worked about the "danged" tough "RKW" wood finish Remington had used and how difficult it was going to be to remove it before applying his more appropriate lacquer finish. I took it back to the gun club and missed even more targets than previous before realizing that the gun's single sight plane, as complemented by its high rib, was not working and that this sighting system would likely never work for me (My custom Merkel has since proven this precipitous thinking on my part.). This could not be my fault; the gun had sullied its reputation and with it my budding competitive shooting career on its own.

A sympathetic club regular offered to let me try his son's 16-bore Winchester model 39 single-barrel hammergun. I hit everything that rose before me with it. Next, he handed me his Remington ribless model 870 field grade pump-gun, also a 16-bore with a full choke, with which I performed tolerably well. The son wanted his Old Man to buy my trap gun for him; he offered terms, which I rejected. I advertised my Remington trap gun in the local newspaper and eventually sold it for a fine profit. My new calling, from that moment forward, became business competition and profit-making, which spirited competition I confine to the office, and ended my stillborn career in competitive shooting before it could commence. Then the ice melted...


Best regards to all,

Edwardian

We are having a SxS fun shoot Aug 18 at a wonderful Sporting Clay club in IN where we had our state shoot. A very challenging course with a 32" Kolar or Perazzi. I'm going to shoot my 28" Grant SLE. I don't expect to shoot as well as I do with my Perazzi, but I would like to win. A friend of mine has a Model 21 with 32" barrels set up for sporting. He will likely win and is a Master Class shooter, but I can give him a run for the trophy, and plan on doing so.

All my best, SRH

I have no idea what I might win when when I shoot an NSCA event, but this past Spring, I won a Guerini Summit in a 4-man shoot-off, that I later sold for 3K. How's that?

And, fwiw, I was shooting a gun I like and was having fun doing it.

For the record, everything Stan explained about competitive clay shooting rings true with me. We be simpatico.
JR

You guys certainly appear more 'simpatico' than Homeless jOe and AmarilloMike. That's for sure. ;-)

Whatever. They can speak for themselves.

I'll say this: Stan Hillis is the most knowledgeable shooter-friend I have, and maybe the most capable with a shotgun as well.
JR

You are the one who coined the term simpatico, John, that's all. Sounds sort of like a movie, "The Simpatico's" starring JR and SRH.