Project Frankenshotty report

Last night after work my buddy and I headed down to Marion County F&G to relieve a little stress after what had been (for me at least) a pretty rugged week at work.  I took my Walther P22, my .25 ACP Jetfire, the 1951E Beretta, and of course the Horrible Frankenshotgun.

I hadn’t yet shot the 9mm 1951 Beretta, so taking it out and giving it a few rounds was a pretty fun exercise.  The sights, being pure itty-bitty military with a lot of light around the front sight were pretty good for fast shooting at close range targets, but out to 15-25 yards the groups opened up a little bit.  It did have a problem jamming open on the last round, which probably means that the aftermarket magazine I have for it is junk – which would not surprise me at all.

The Jetfire in .25 ACP was fantastic, not jamming or failing to feed at all, eating 35 grain hollowpoints or 50 grain FMJ like there was no tomorrow.  It’s actually a lot more accurate than I could possibly with the teeny-tiny sights on it, and I was actually able to ring the 50 yard gong with it 3 times out of 9.

The Walther is still the Walther, just going bang all the damn time.  I swear, I must have gotten the golden child of P22s, because mine is still running well north of a 3k round count.

Now, the part that you people are reading this for – the Frankenshotty report.  The short version is that it ran like a dream, chugging through two boxes of shells like a dream.  Ejection was clean and positive with no failures to feed or fire.  Like I said, the gun itself ran just fine.  The operator on the hand…well, let’s just that apparently the gun gods made me a pretty good pistol shot at the expense of my shotgun shooting skills.

I think I hit the little bird maybe 1 out of every 6 shots, but that could be generous.  As a comparison, I hit the 100 yard gong with my P22 (Greg was there, ask him) 6 times out of 10.

The problem with me sucking at trap/clay shooting is that holy crap was it addicting.  The times that I did hit the clay and watched it disintegrate were among some of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had in the shooting sports. I can completely understand how people get hooked on this, because the second I felt that gun kick into my shoulder and I saw the bird blow apart over the sights I thought to myself “hell yeah, that was fun”.  The recoil with a 20 gauge and the hard plastic “pad” (that term is used loosely) on the stock of Frankenshotty was just enough to let you know that you weren’t shooting a .410, but not so abusive as to take the fun out of the shooting.

Which of course means I’m going to have to practice with Frankenshotgun, as well as maybe (after I buy the Glock 35 and the 1911 and the pistol grip home defense shotgun) buy another shotgun for shooting clays on a regular basis.

To my wife: I am sorry that I’m now addicted to another shooting sport.  Really, really sorry.

5 Comments

  1. Trap/Skeet is strange because the shooting style has absolutely nothing in common with pistol or rifle shooting. That’s the hardest thing to remember… you don’t “aim” a shotgun… you don’t “squeeze” the trigger… all the things that are pressed into your head when you learn rifle or pistol technique go right out the window.

  2. Yeah, I watched a lot of clays sail past my muzzle as I was trying to align my sight picture, then remembered I didn’t HAVE sights, then the clay hit the ground.

  3. Now you know how people get addicted to Golf, just that one perfect shot in 100 or so keeps ’em coming back. “I know I can do it again”.

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