I remember, when I first started shooting trap, I bought a new Beretta trap gun. After a few weeks of shooting with it, I was going through the door of my club house carrying my gun in one hand and shells in the other. The wind blew the door closed and before I could get out of the way, the door hit my gun and put a small ding near the end of the buttstock of my new gun. I was ticked off...... This summer, I bought a used Citori when I started shooting skeet. Some of you might remember. It was used, but there wasn't a mark on it because the guy who owned it before me, bought it, shot it a few times and then turned around and traded it back to the dealer. So, I couldn't really tell if it had been shot. It was still that new. A guy at my range wanted to shoot it because he didn't have his skeet gun that day. He had let my use his skeet gun a few weeks before when I was just starting at shooting skeet. So, fair was fair, right? We were both shooting the same gun on the same round- handing it back and forth and while he was turning around talking to everyone and not watching what he was doing, he dropped a shell while he was loading the gun. He made a few stabs at it and the shell flipped up in the air a few times and in order to catch it, he clamped it between his bicep and the buttstock and the rim from the brass on the shell made a nice ding right in the middle of the stock. The first day I had it!! I was ticked off. Neither of these were expensive guns, mind you. But, things like that happen. Better with a thumper than a nice classic.
