ShunZu
member
As a judge of a local meat shoot, and over 40 years' experience shotgunning everything from league trap & skeet, birds and you-name-it, I have a question I hope someone here will have the answer to. Let me explain to the best of my ability.
Given that the shoot is a "legal choke (.675 and higher)" shoot as advertised, we get a great turnout by guys with everyday shotguns and it's hugely popular. It never fails that a few guys will show up, usually together, with shotguns that pass a (6 inches long) choke check, but shoot entirely too tight to be a standard barrel / choke combination. Sometimes a hot gun will be obvious to the eye and that's a no-brainer to disqualify them. BUT, we're seeing more and more guns that have been worked so professionally that you can't tell it with the naked eye, even when pulling the barrel off and doing a visual check. I'm not trying to offend anyone here with a "hot" gun, because I have a 34" 1100 myself that's been heavily modified -- and I shoot it in unlimited shoots because it won't pass a choke check and it's obvious the gun has been worked over by a pro. My fundamental problem is this: My gun is hot and I'm honest when talking about it at a shoot.... but there are these guys that effectively lie, playing everyone as idiots, trying to pass these hot guns off as unmodified, legal rigs. Not very honorable imho. To the hosts of a shoot trying to keep it a level playing field, the confrontation gets ugly as those guys get louder and louder (can we spell 'many beers later'?) and they're told their guns are being disqualified because they're hot. It holds up the shoots, and frustrates folks with regular shotguns -- honest guys go home while the cheats make a fuss. I'm tired of the lying, cheating and BS -- and next week when they walk on they're simply going to be told to go to another shoot and try to push off their hot guns to someone else less suspecting. We will accommodate them with an unlimited shoot if they want to shoot on another range, but we're not going to let them shoot against normal full choke shotguns owned by everyday guys just trying to win some pork steaks for the grill. Sorry that took so many words to explain -- I did my best. I just really dislike liars... and it seems that cheat guns trying to be passed off as a normal shotguns sets the owner up as something less than honorable.
Here's my question: I know about chamber work, backboring, swedging and all those technical ways to make a shotgun shoot tighter... but how in hell are they making barrels shoot so tight that they 1) pass visual tests and 2) defy the common sense test that, at 65 feet, there isn't much left of the target card to even judge? How can you detect a heavily modified barrel? These guys were shooting patterns as dense as my tricked out 34" 1100 but there is NO way I could detect any work had been done on them. What am I missing? Thanks in advance for your thoughts and experience.
Given that the shoot is a "legal choke (.675 and higher)" shoot as advertised, we get a great turnout by guys with everyday shotguns and it's hugely popular. It never fails that a few guys will show up, usually together, with shotguns that pass a (6 inches long) choke check, but shoot entirely too tight to be a standard barrel / choke combination. Sometimes a hot gun will be obvious to the eye and that's a no-brainer to disqualify them. BUT, we're seeing more and more guns that have been worked so professionally that you can't tell it with the naked eye, even when pulling the barrel off and doing a visual check. I'm not trying to offend anyone here with a "hot" gun, because I have a 34" 1100 myself that's been heavily modified -- and I shoot it in unlimited shoots because it won't pass a choke check and it's obvious the gun has been worked over by a pro. My fundamental problem is this: My gun is hot and I'm honest when talking about it at a shoot.... but there are these guys that effectively lie, playing everyone as idiots, trying to pass these hot guns off as unmodified, legal rigs. Not very honorable imho. To the hosts of a shoot trying to keep it a level playing field, the confrontation gets ugly as those guys get louder and louder (can we spell 'many beers later'?) and they're told their guns are being disqualified because they're hot. It holds up the shoots, and frustrates folks with regular shotguns -- honest guys go home while the cheats make a fuss. I'm tired of the lying, cheating and BS -- and next week when they walk on they're simply going to be told to go to another shoot and try to push off their hot guns to someone else less suspecting. We will accommodate them with an unlimited shoot if they want to shoot on another range, but we're not going to let them shoot against normal full choke shotguns owned by everyday guys just trying to win some pork steaks for the grill. Sorry that took so many words to explain -- I did my best. I just really dislike liars... and it seems that cheat guns trying to be passed off as a normal shotguns sets the owner up as something less than honorable.
Here's my question: I know about chamber work, backboring, swedging and all those technical ways to make a shotgun shoot tighter... but how in hell are they making barrels shoot so tight that they 1) pass visual tests and 2) defy the common sense test that, at 65 feet, there isn't much left of the target card to even judge? How can you detect a heavily modified barrel? These guys were shooting patterns as dense as my tricked out 34" 1100 but there is NO way I could detect any work had been done on them. What am I missing? Thanks in advance for your thoughts and experience.