This post will probably not be about what you think it is – it’s about guns, not attractive women. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a guy named Bill Davis was making custom wheelguns for PPC, Bullseye, and early IPSC competition. One of these guns was called the Cuger/Cugar/Cougar (various spellings have been found all over the place) getting its name as a portmanteau of its parent’s names: the Ruger Security Six frame and the Colt Python barrel. These guns were true custom guns, and they shot fantastically well – I can speak from personal experience on that one.
You see, my dad has one of these guns. It’s a Cuger with a 6 inch Python barrel, custom action work, the whole nine yards and it just shoots. I keep trying to convince my dad that he needs to allow that gun to drift east of the Rockies and take up residence in Indiana. I can think of a few things that I could do with a 6 inch .357, and it’s a gun that is simply begging, begging I tell you, to be shot.
Sadly, no one is making the Cuger revolvers any longer – like the Smythons and the Smolts of yesteryear, the market for custom revolvers has dwindled significantly with the advances made in auto-loader technology. I’m not saying that it couldn’t be done, because I’d be willing to bet that the guys at Bowen could do it, and there isn’t a shortage of gunsmiths that could mate a Python barrel to a Security Six frame; the problem is that there’s no market for this sort of thing any more. The revolver is no longer the king of the competition guns, and although participation in the revolver categories of IDPA and IPSC has increased, it’s still nowhere near the level of participation in the Production/SSP categories, which by far get the most number of shooters.
I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, either. The public has overwhelmingly adopted the autopistol as the primary weapon for personal defense, it makes sense that competition would match that trend.
This is not the gun my dad owns, but it’s the exact same configuration.
Anyone who likes wheelguns should be able to see what it is I find attractive about this gun – good sights, good trigger, excellent balance, you get the idea.
This gun would be a perfect revolver for shooting IPSC revolver, or ICORE (not IDPA, the barrel is too long), and from a nostalgia point it hearkens back to the day when the revolver was king, and everyone who was anyone knew that “wheelguns are real guns”.
Barring a major shift in the shooting culture, I don’t see us returning to those days, which is kind of too bad.
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