I was doing a search for barrels on the 'net, and ran across This Nice Looking Early Contender Barrel. It sells Friday evening this week. It's a .357 Mag, for shooting the Thompson Center HotShot Cartridges. The removable choke has two flats on it, which is the earliest design. Soon after they began making these, they took the flats off and made a wrench that fit in the end of the choke for taking it off and back on.
Thompson Center promoted these barrels for hunting small game, and I guess they would work OK on rabbits at close range. I tried a .44 Mag on squirrels and was sadly disappointed. You can't buy the HotShot cartridges nowadays, but you can load shot shells with Speer capsules, and they make fine snake loads, especially with the choke on the end of this barrel.
The lightweight octagon barrells are very sensitive to changes in load when shooting bullets, but they are accurate. I recently bought an early 10" .357 barrel (Not a choked version.) and it shoots much better than I do. I just bought a scope base and will be installing glass soon.
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3 comments:
Yeah, I remember now. Back when I was active in IHMSA the octagon .22's were the way to go. I guess this is old wisdom rediscovered, eh?
Merle
If I hadn't just bought the unchoked, 10" version I would be all over this one. They look good with the iron sights, but my eyes don't do well with iron now, so I am going to ruin the looks and put a scope on top.
Don't forget to shoot the e-Postal this weekend. Danno's son is the host. The link is over on the left side.
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