Had fun yesterday shooting clays with a serious clay shooter. He's the reining senior champion here in Colorado (or at least he was) and he's still very competitive even in his 80s. He was shooting his favorite stack-barrel and my son and I were shooting our normal hunting side-by-sides. It was sure fun to finally get out and about in the sunshine and the breeze and... after a bit it got me to thinking about just how well a nicer Spanish sidelock tolerates the relatively-inexpensive Remington and Federal 12-gauge loads available at the ranges in our area. I opted for a flat of the Federal one-ounce loads but they still seemed fairly sharp to me. Both guns were a bit hard to open at times (my 557 Arietta normally digests RSTs as a course of habit, although it is in proof for 1 1/8 ounce 2 3/4 loads). I'm guessing that if I'm going to be doing much more of this, I'll need to either find a reasonable supply of Winchester AA Lightweights or lean to reload again. The maroon Federal shells we were shooting seemed to be all over the place in terms of report and recoil.
Last edited by Lloyd3; 04/26/20 02:33 PM.
