Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Single Shots Single shot Help

Started getting into reloading a few years back and now some of these other calibers have peaked my interest to load for. I have been considering picking up a single shot contender or encore for the ease of switching barrels and experimenting with other calibers. I do not hunt and am told old to fight in an end of the world thing so I thought single shot would be fine for bench sitting and punching paper

Any thoughts on the contender or encore? I have heard they aren't as good sine S&W bought them. Is there an advantage to one over the other? I like rifle shooting and it seemed like all the contender barrels were shorter than 16 in

Is the G2 the red headed stepchild of this line up?



Any help would be great.


Thanks
Skeeter

The Contender and G2 Contender are much lighter and handier than the Encore while the Encore is much stronger. Contenders are designed for medium pressure cartridges like the .30-30 and 7-30 Waters as well the .222 family of cartridges which may have higher pressure than normally used in the Contender because they have less back thrust.

Just got a SS Contender, and the quality is just fine, including the trigger pull which ranges between 3-11 and 3-15, and is acceptably crisp. I bought a rifle frame, then a .44 mag barrel by MGM, but from Haus of Arms, which has a few ready to sell.

If you plan using it as a range toy, the Encore will allow you to use just about any cartridge without fretting over strength, and may treat the brass better as well because it stretches less. The downside is that without the dual firing pin of the Contender, you will either have to switch out the CF pin or use special offset barrels in order to shoot rimfires. Neither is a huge deal, but everyone has their own futzing-around threshhold.

I bought the Contender rather than the Encore for the light weight, about a pound difference, and have other rifles if I want to shoot something more powerful. Rimfires, small rimmed rounds, and cartridges in the .223 and .30/30 families, and possibly a .444 Marlin are possibilities for future barrels for me. At some point, larger cartridges like the .444 and .45/70, while safe, might get kind of sporty in a lightweight like the Contender. Custom barrel makers offer some cartridges like the .30/40 and .300 Savage for G2 frames, but I think that's pushing the limit just a bit. One advantage of custom barrels is you can specify the length and twist you prefer, but the cost is naturally a bit higher, along with the quality in most cases.

I liked the smaller contender but i am sure i would want to get a 308 barrel or something larger down the road so I figure the larger encore might be the way to go. Even the custom barrels being expensive isn't to bad a trade off since i wouldn't have to have to buy multiple firearms. I figure storing several barrels would be easier than multiple fire arms

Thinking 17 Hornet to start followed something with some more push like a 6.5 x 55 and maybe a heavy barrel 223

Thanks for hyping this up. I had been on the fence the last 6 months

MGM has a number of good videos on YouTube. Might give you a notion or two.