2016 Gear

2016 Gear


I'm not a sponsored shooter, and I don't have people knocking down my door wanting to hand me free items to use them, and make the product look good. I've spent time trying, and picking out gear that is reliable, functional, and does exactly what I need it to do. Shooting is not a cheap sport to participate in, its not the gun that is costly, no matter how big that number is, it ends up being one of the lower costs when you start to compare it to ammo, match fee, travel expense, and extra training if that's what you end up doing. I know that there were plenty of cheaper options out there for gear, but not wanting to repeat a beginning shooting mistake, and buy a ton of different guns, and waste a ton of money finding something, this time I decided to "buy once, cry once." Spend the money on something that works for me, and that I won't be looking to replace anytime in the near future.




USPSA:

This year I'm going to be running in the Single Stack Division, I took some time to look at several different options, but decided to run the Dan Wesson Pointman Nine. Dan Wesson (Owned by CZ) has a rep for building a great gun, it's not a custom gun, but it's about as close as you are going to get with a production made gun.

Dan Wesson PM-9

The Single Stack design keeps me with a similar platform to the 2011, so I have some commonality with my 3-Gun pistol. Hayes Custom gun did a tune-up, and trigger job, I added the Dawson magwell, VZ grips, and changed out to a .90 Dawson front fiber sight. The plan is to run Wilson Combat 10 round mag's, but I've had some early issues with them, while I believe I have a solution in place, I need to test it on a couple of magazines. This is one amazing handgun, smooth, flat shooting, and a minimal recoil, it's an Alpha machine, and if I ever get myself together, I'll be able to show that.

I'm still going to run my Ghost 360 Mag Pouch w/1911 Insert in order to keep using my old Production rig. With the addition of a Bladetech holster to the BSPS BOSS Holster my rig is set, and ready to go.


3-Gun Gear:

Pistol

Hayes Custom Gun 6" Sight tracker

The "Alpha" Pistol in my safe these days, is a brand new, Hayes Custom Gun 6" Sight Tracker that just came home. The order was originally going to be for a .40 Limited Gun, but when I got into 3-Gun last year, I decided to switch the order to a 9mm, which allowed me to reload only one caliber. It would have meant shooting Limited Minor in USPSA, and that's why I made the call to shoot this season in the Single Stack Division.

HCG 6"

Personally I think it's some of Ben Hayes finest work, he told me it's the best looking 6" that he has done. Phoenix Trinity frame and aluminum aggressive grip. Ben sandblasted the grip just a little bit for me to remove a bit of texture, but left it with the perfect grip for me. The trigger breaks at a very crisp 1.6 lbs, it has minimal reset and almost no over-travel, it's flat shooting, ridiculous accurate, and is very easy to shoot at the small steel, long range plate racks, and far steel that you see in 3-Gun. This gun was worth every penny, and will be the pride of my collection for a very long time.

It's going to run a lot of this brass!

HCG 6" Sight Tracker & Dan Wesson PM-9

Rifle:

HCG 18" Custom AR

Once again, I went to Hayes Custom Gun for my AR. Last fall they were the choice when Linda got her AR. I found out pretty quick that AR's are not quite "one size fit's all". I realize that I could have put in a lot of time in practice with Linda's AR, but I had some significant issues with eye relief, and I had a very hard time getting a consistent cheek weld. In short, I lost confidence with the AR in very short order, post Fallen Brethren, and this year I decided that I wanted to run something that fit me. My stock is a Luth AR MBA-1 which gave me a little extra cheek height, and a little longer stock, which has helped me with my eye relief issue. In addition, I'm getting a consistent cheek weld, every single time. The stock is tan, because that's the stock that I won at Fallen Brethren, I may cerakote it down the road, but right now it's a reminder that 3-Gun Prize tables do have some decent prizes, and even someone who did not shoot a good match can win something worthwhile.

On top of my AR I'm running a Vortex Razor HD Gen 2 1-6x24 w/JM Reticle, I looked at both the Leupold VX-6, and the Swarovski Z6i as possibilites. The Leupold had the same old eye relief issues I'd experienced in the past, and the Swaro is a great scope, but it was nearly twice as much as the Vortex. Better? Yes, but I can't quantify it, and for my dollar, the Vortex, and it's amazing eye relief were a great fit for me.

I'm most nervous about rifle in 3-Gun, but this week I've developed some confidence in my AR. Now it's going to be a matter of learning the dope, and my hold overs. Since this is my AR, and I have all season to get used to it, I expect that by October I'll be able to have a much better grasp, and not have to write distances and holds on my arm for long range stages!


Shotgun:

HCG Benelli M2

As you may have guessed, I went back to Hayes Custom Gun for this 24" Benelli M2 with 12 round Nordic extended mag, using Carlson chokes. Aaron is member of Team Benelli so with him doing the work, and essentially teaching me shotgun, you would not expect anything else. The reality is, that we looked at other options, but the ease of operation, and reliability of the Benelli made it worth the investment. The last thing I wanted was to spend $300 on a match entry,plus hotel, food, travel and ammo for a match, and have a shotgun that did not run, which eliminated a couple right off the bat.

This is actually Linda's shotgun, which she is graciously sharing with me. Since the shotgun seems to fit both of us, I did not see a reason to go out and get a second one at this time. Doing the customization, and loading port work is not cheap, and again, did we really need a duplicate? I'd consider a 26" gun with a 14 round tube in the future, in part because I could use that better shooting clay's and dove hunting, which are things several work customers are interested in.

We did have a rear sight installed, and I think it was a very wise decision, the gun shoots slugs like lasers, and I have a ton of confidence in the gun. I'm going to have to spend a lot more time with it, and work on things like loading bird and buck together as needed, but being honest, I love shotgun, and I love the Benelli.

I'm using Invictus Practical Rack 12 caddies. Actually, I've got a couple of the Rack 12, 4 8Q caddies, and 4 4Q caddies. They aren't all mine, they are split evenly with Linda. I tried Taccom caddies, and found them to have so much retention that it was nearly impossible to grab shells consistently. I know a lot of folks like them, but they just were not for me. I borrowed a set of Carbon Arms caddies, and really liked them, but again, just a hair more retention that I wanted, and it was hard for me to get clean grabs. Invictus have solid retention, and make for a very easy and consistent grab that makes a lot of sense for me, who is just learning to quad load.

Invictus owner, Kevin Pratt also came thru for me. Getting ready for X-Treme, I did not have a chest rig, and I would need it because there is a 48 round stage in the match. He did not have inventory, for a chest rig, and the second Rack 12, but he communicated his expected "in stock" date for parts, let me know that they came in, rushed me to the front of the list, and shipped my order on a Saturday. That is going absolutely above and beyond in terms of customer service.


Ammo:

Pistol, I'm running my own reloads, which right now is 3.8 grains of Bullseye (until it's gone and I switch to Titegroup) with Xtreme 124 grain JHP plated bullets. This gave me about a 128 PF out of the Dan Wesson, and I still need to chrono with the HCG 6". Accuracy has been solid, but more testing is needed.


Rifle. 55 grain PMC brass is going to be the standard match ammo that I'll run. It doesn't take advantage of the 1:7 barrel twist, but it's been consistent, it's reasonably cheap, and I've got a few thousand rounds of it. For long range stages, I'm running Fiocchi Exacta 77 grain ammo with Sierra Match King Bullets. That ammo ran great last year, and I fully expect the same results again this year.

Shotgun I'm running Fiocchi Low Recoil (1145 FPS) slugs which have performed exceptionally well even at longer distances. For now I'm going to finish up some Remmington Gun club birdshot (1200 FPS) that I bought while breaking in the gun. The gun runs it very well, and it's not low recoil, but it's very manageable. I am sitting on several cases of Winchester Light Target Load (1145 FPS) which I anticipate being able to run once the Gun Club ammo is gone, and the gun is fully broken in.


Summary:

HCG Custom Benelli M2 and AR

HCG 6" Sight Tracker and Dan Wesson PM-9

The gear far exceeds my ability. I could probably achieve similar results with a Glock, a JM 930 Shotgun, and a Bushmaster AR. With all that said, it's top notch gear that will make my life easier, and if I will never question the reliability. Huge things that mattered to me, so that peace of mind is worth something to me. It's a bit of a quality of life issue, with my gear all set, now I can focus on ammo, practice, and other things.

Really looking forward to the 2016 season!

Beretta 1301 Competition Shotgun

Beretta 1301 Competition Shotgun


The last hardware phase of 3-Gun was picking out a shotgun for myself. I had a ton of people offer suggestions, I did a lot of looking around to find something that I wanted. Competition shotguns have such wide variety of prices that I had a hard time starting to look. I needed to know what I should be looking for, and what really mattered in matches. The other key point would be investment cost, I did not want to spend a couple thousand dollars on something without being committed to the sport. Being cheap has it's benefits, but sometimes it can cost you money. Buy something that is junk, you spend money getting it ready to go, and when you finally get to the point you want something better, you end up unable to to get your investment back out of the gun. So that's a fairly diverse group of things to satisfy.

Beretta Supports Competition? Why not pistol as well?

Early on, it was obvious that Benelli, specifically the M2, was one of the most popular shotguns being run in 3-Gun. The Inertia driven system is very reliable, and it's light. Being light it's fast and easy to point but the downside is that it has the most recoil. It also had about a $1300 cost new, and did require a fair amount of work to be done to it, so my investment would be in the $1700 to $1800 area, which is just more than I wanted to spend on a first shotgun. As a side note, the Benelli Super Vinci came with a stellar recommendation from Jay Carillo, but it also was in the same price range, and I just could not quite bring myself to make that level of a commitment.

This Italian Looks Pretty Nice

The other early pitch was the Mossberg JM930 Pro, and it was at the complete other end of the spectrum. Priced at about $600 it was where I felt comfortable, it had multiple people recommending it to me, so you'd think it would have been a serious contender for my dollars. As I started researching it, I found all sorts of issues of with loading, extracting, and from a reliability point of view it appeared to be a hot mess. I went to a match recently, and one squad had three people shooting the JM930 (of 12 shooters) and only one managed to finish the match. For each person telling me it was worth the price, I had at least one person saying to stay as far away as possible. No middle ground on this one scared me away.

Only 1 Choke Tube is Included

The Stoeger M3000 was a very serious contender at the end. At $500 it was the cheapest of all the shotguns I looked at, it had the Inertia driven system that I liked about the Benelli M2, but it needed some serious work. I'm not comfortable taking the Dremmel out and opening up the loading port. I could save about $200 in professional work if I felt comfortable doing that on my own, but for now, that's something I had to build into the cost. Total investment would have been around $650-$700 to get it into match shape, and I could have invested another $150 or so in parts to make it a little nicer. Jesse Tischauser, who is an excellent 3-Gun shooter ran a fairly stripped down one this past season to show he could be competitive with it at the highest level. I walked away impressed, but I had a hard time getting any kind of reviews from people who had shot one locally. The consensus was that people did not know it, and thought the $500 price point was a "buyer beware" mark. Ultimately I did not go this route, and I could have missed the boat, only time will tell.

The Beretta 1301 Competition was actually an early preference. I liked the way it pointed, it was infinitely lighter than the Remington Versamax (which was never one I considered, it was so heavy I could not imagine running around all day with it, even with that mitigating recoil.) and it was slightly heavier than the Benelli M2. The 24" model was natural to point, had a great cheek weld, and felt very good in my hands. The list price was $1199, and I was seeing them online about $1000. It came with the oversized charging handle, and other 3-Gun ready features. All it needs is a +5 magazine extension and in theory it's good to go. In reality, I'd still have the loading port opened up a bit, but that's not essential, not right now at least.

From the Factory, Loading Port is Opened Up a Little

I'd kind of put the Beretta on the back burner, and was looking for a Stoeger, when I saw Cabela's of all places had it on sale, and I happened to have a coupon for it as well. After doing some serious driving from one to another, I found the 24" that I was looking for, and make the commitment. For me, I got the function, features, and reliability that I was looking for. I don't have to make any serious modifications, and can pretty much go, and when I am ready to do some work, then I've got a platform that will be worthy of it.

Stock Oversized Charging Handle

So now all the hardware is taken care of, and as I have found it's not a cheap sport. I still have to get the accessories I need, shotgun shell caddies, AR mag holders, a new modular belt, a new holster, as well as a jogging baby carriage (big wheels, not the little one) and add gun holders and so on to it to carry my gear between stages. I'm glad this part is over, now I can get the remaining gear taken care of, get some practice in, and see how much I enjoy this in 2015.