B&P Sporting and Competition 2000
Shells
Jay Gentry
5/30/00
Recently a friend and I got a chance to try out the B&P Sporting shells, as well as the
Competition 2000 shells, at the trap
range. The shells themselves looked to be very well constructed. Both types having
thick hulls and shiny polished brass. My friend claims that's how I pick out my
guns. In his words "I pick the 'shiny' ones". We next noticed that the crimp was
only a 6 point instead of the more popular 8 point. Turning the shell over we also noticed
a plastic ring around the primer rather than the standard brass. B&P has a reason for
doing this. It's called the 'Gordon
System' and you can impress your buddies by reading about it . These last two
points are probably only important to the reloader. It's rumored that the shells are only
good for one or two reloads. In comparison, it's common to reload the Winchester AA shells
eight or more times. We got our four boxes for free (running a shotgun web site is cool),
so we didn't really care.
Next it was time to put them to the ultimate test of seeing how they cycled through my
normally picky Mossberg 500. If I can chamber and eject a box of shells with no jams then
I'm satisfied with the dimensions of the shells (we're very scientific). I can happily
report that no jams were experienced.
How did they shoot? Very fast. The Sporting and the Competition 2000 shells really
jumped out and smoked the clays. Well, my friend smoked a lot of the clays. Mine just
seemed to knock chips off. I suspect that his box, though packaged identically, was
'hotter' than mine. He might have a different story, but he's not writing this article is
he?
My two cents? I'm not sure that my shoulder would want me to shoot 1000 rounds of
these at once, but for the average shooter or dove hunter it shouldn't be a problem. If
not for the reloading issue I would have given these shells a rating of 'Doubled', but
instead can only say that B&P 'Smoked 'em'.
(ed. note: See complex scientific rating in the right hand column.)
copyright 2000 Shotgunworld
|
Shotgunworld Rating System
Missed it = poor
Chipped 'em = average
Smoked 'em = good
Doubled = very good
Doubles set to wobble and I smoked 'em from the 27 yard mark (DWS27) = Dang,
this thing is unbelievable! |
