Home Forums Birds & Dogs Shotguns Olympics and O/U

Just finished watching the Olympic skeet finals and have a question. Why do all the competitors use over/under shotguns? Aren't semi-autos allowed?

Be kind, I've never been a diehard shotgun enthusiast.

An O/U is more reliable than an auto. If your auto jams or fails to feed or what ever, it is a lost bird. Lots of moving parts to mess up and break.
O/U's about the only thing that will stop the shell form going off is a broken hammer spring or maybe on the off chance a broken firing pin.

You are allowed 2 malfunctions in a round of international and you are allowed to reshoot the target. After the third occurrence targets will begin to be called lost.

My current Beretta XCell 400 has had two malfunctions in approximately 4500 rounds. Autoloaders are getting better.

I was watching an interview with Kim Rhode and she was saying that she shot between 500 and a 1000 targets a day and she shot the same gun for 18 years before it was stolen. She figures she has shot 3 MILLION targets since she started. I'd like to see an auto that would last for 18 yrs of shooting like that. With an O/U you can change hinge pins, trunions, firing pins and main springs and you have basically a mechanicaly new shotgun.

She said that having to learn another shotgun was like starting over.

Rookie....

I can shoot equally with almost any shotgun that I pick up.

Solidly mediocre, regardless.

Didn't say they would last as long, just that they are becoming more reliable.

You probably will never see it and there are a select few O/U that would still be around either. Beretta-Perazzi-Krieghoff-Merkel and a few others are the only ones.

Shoot them enough and they all break and it's nice when you are sponsored by one of the above and maintenance is part of the deal. Combined with being given so many free to sell each year as part of the compensation. You would have to sell a lot of Beretta semi-autos to be the equivalent of 5-7 Perazzi.

Pay a top gun enough and he/she would shoot an autoloader and win. Wayne Mayes one of the top skeet shooters of all time won more than a little in the 12Ga with a Winchester 1400. I'm sure he carried some spare parts with him, but win he did.

Addition: Seen a few Perazzi that were shot a lot and have the barrels separate. Re-solder and it would be chance to have the barrels have the exact same POI as previously. New barrels? Not much different than a new gun. Stock is were a change becomes a big deal. Put yours on a duplicating machine and the end result will still feel different. Kim Rhode is good enough that it obviously didn't take that long to adapt. Then again shooters can be a superstitious bunch.

Well, she's OBVIOUSLY a soon-to-be-terrorist, since she has that much ammunition around..

No kidding.. And I believe it.. If I had to begin using another O/U from my SKBs I'd be runnin' scores in the teens..

Good post - and all true..

How cool is it that we have two gold medals in the shotgun field?
Both shooters are good folks and they smoked their field.
I am sure it is true that they could have done it with an Auto, but they do rely on the gun being the same to keep a Mental edge. ONe less thing to creep into the subconsious(sp?) on the last 5 stations of a big match.

Vincent uses a very modern recoil reducing stock to get the help most of us would use an Auto for.
Interesting to see Kim does not and shoots that many olympic loads with out it.

The auto shotguns got better in 1976 when Winchester introduce the Super X model 1. Let the flames begin.

Doc

Agree and I have 3 hanging around the house. One of them I shot more than little. Have brand new unused Super X Model 1 trap stocks to go with them. With the Model 1s weight they made a great competition shotgun. Although not so great for field work.

I think there is only one stamped part. The rest are machined from steel. They were extremely reliable and with the exception of the magazine tube that tended to rust rather quickly you could run them hard.

No flames here on one of my favorite shotguns, but the new Beretta XCell 400 has it beat for reliability and requires little maintenance. Doesn't look as pretty, nor well built, but I've shot them both more than a little. Others I've talked to that use the XCell mirror my experience.

Shame the Super X Model 1 is no longer with us. Winchester went all out to surpass the 1100 in popularity. They made a much superior shotgun and then couldn't price it competitively, which in the end resulted in them losing the race.

If you shot that many rounds a day you could also go for the Olympic Gold

No recoil pad. Olympic loads. Remember that loads for International/Olympic Trap and Skeet have lighter shot loads than what we normally shoot here....about 7/8ths oz. vs. 1 1/8th oz.
I wonder if recoil is not lessened.
Pete

Recoil is much less with the international load than with 1 1/8 loads. The international loads are very fast, around 1400 FPS. Most use plated shot to improve patterns.

Pete:

I'm thinking not all that much since they crank up the velocity over the normal trap/skeet loads, but I could be wrong.

Bea:

The biography of a gold medal winner:

http://www.shotgunlife.com/Biographies-and-Stories/kim-rhode-olympian-shooter-never-give-up.html

For most it is more than just the shells shot. Most of today's top guns have the opportunity to start young-and with the right instruction-when their brains are like little sponges. It much like learning a language. Much easier when you are young. The angles, leads, reaction to slight changes becomes automatic. They lean to trust their eyes. They seldom need glasses for correction. The Army is constantly looking for promising young shooters. Then the qualifying to make the Army team is intense. For the most part they are hardened competitors at an early age.

For me the Olympics is much more than watching the winners receive medals. It is true Greek theater. Comedy and tragedy. Just watched the women's 1500M and the USA girl who was a contender, was tripped for the second time, once in the Worlds and now the Olympics. My heart went out for her. If she can shake this off after so much effort to be there, to have her chance taken away by chance, she will end up a winner. Maybe more so than those who stood on the podium.

Pete,
Not, no recoil pad, but no recoil reducing mechanical device. I dont know the name of the setup that Vincent Hancock uses but it is a skeleton stock with a hydraulic device under the comb that takes up the pounding of a 1000 round day.
The shell is a 24 gram load(Under 7\8 oz) but the speed is way up there. The governing body lowered the shot charge to get away from the complete scores that were being shot. These athletes are creeping back up to just that again with training.
The target is faster than a standard clay and is made harder\tougher to withstand the launch velocity from the machine throwing it. Bunker trap is a whole nother animal from the ATA version. Olympic Skeet uses many doubles not thrown in American Skeet and is shot from a full low gun hold with the line on the pocket of the vest for the stock at the starting\calling point.
All the shooters on the US team work very hard at their event and we are lucky to still have the shooting sports as part of it. The pressure to drop it has been large at times.

To get a handful of gold medals this time around is sweeter still.
Esp. against the Europeans who take it very seriously followed closely by the Chinese.

From the quick look I got it looked like Hancock was using one of these or something similar.

http://www.precisionfitstocks.com

Nothing actually reduces recoil. All the various devices and semis do is spread it out over a longer time frame. They turn it into more of a push than an all at once hit.

I dont know which of the many types it is but I can say they make a big difference in the "Feel" with an OU. The Trap shooters have many to choose from. I dont own one but have shot a Browning target Skeet gun with a model that incorporates the comb and the recoil pad locked together and it makes the full house handicap trap loads a pussycat to shoot compared to a fixed stock. The longer time of the pulse takes the beating out of it.
Still imagining the shooting of 800 targets a day.
I went the other way and am shooting slow 7\8 oz loads to keep it affordable and fun for a 200 round Sunday. Works for young shooters very well also on close targets.

Bob

One of the issues of International trap is walking to the next station with a loaded gun if the second shot is not used.
O/U's make this easy as you simply open the gun.

However, with a semi, if you have not shot your second shot, you have to open the action before you can move, and of course the shell pops out, and it's a PIA .
The new Berreta semi made for INTL trap is a break action, and although it is a very cool gun, it sounds and feels like a danged loose bunch of bolts in a can !

It works by opening the gun, dropping in a round, closing ,and putting another in a carrier on the side.
On firing , the spent round ejects out the bottom, and the one in the carrier is cycled into the chamber.
You can open the gun, and there it is.
Close the gun and stick another round in the carrier and you have two more for the next staion if you miss the clay with the first shot.
I can't see them lasting with that much slop in them.
I shot one a few weeks back and don't care if ever see another one!!
Cat

Have done up to 1200 in a day, but that was years ago, don't think it would be all that much fun now.

Think you are referring to this one. Heavy is an understatement. A couple were showing up at some SC tournaments a few years back, but have now disappeared.




The shooter is Scott Robertson and he can shoot anything.