I was digging around in the basement looking for a pair waders when I stumbled across a flat of these shells from a few years back. The are the 28 gram Competition line in 7 1/2 shot. These used to be my FITASC loads and they were pretty good to me.

One could buy them at many sporting clays events as Joe Cantey would bring in pallets of them. I recall buying them for $29/flat with a discount of 10% for 20+ flats. That was cheaper than Winchester AA or Remington STS by at least $10. The shells were made by Rio so were not as desired if one reloaded but when flying from home to event then back these made "fire and forget" more palatable.

Orion changed their name to Clay Cartridge after Weatherby threatened to take Joe to court over the use of Orion in the name. I have a few boxes of those too, someplace. I do load the hulls but as hunting loads with the semiautos where I am not too bothered if I lose a hull. I have red and blue hulls where the red denotes 7 1/2 shot and the blue number 4.

Just a short swing onto memory lane for those who shot some competitions 20 or so years ago.

Shot a lot of Rio and Clay Cartridge. Best price I can remember was $32 a flat delivered. We would group up and buy one or two pallets and they would be delivered to your home.

Once I had a hundred flats in the garage, and left the house for a short period and the alarm tripped. Came home to two police cars in the driveway. Nice guys, and we did a walk thru together. Gun here and there and nothing mentioned. In the garage were the hundred flats and the one guy says, I have to ask. “How many shotgun shells are in that stack.” I replied, 25,000. He then asked, why? I asked if he knew about sporting clays and got a no. “How about trap and skeet?” “Yes.” “Well, that’s what I do for fun.” “Got it” he said. I thanked them for showing up, we shook hands and they pulled out.

About the same time I quit reloading 12 gauge, in that the savings were not there.

Shot with Joe and his boy JB a few times.

Ive still got 7 flats of them on hand. I used to shoot at the Hermitage 2x a week and would buy a pallet once a year from Joe

These may be from as late as the 2002 US Open. It may have even been earlier but years begin to blur together after nearly 40 years of shooting sporting clays. I go back far enough that actual field guns were common and was there when Jim Jamison won the first Nationals using a Browning A5 (the real one). I just don't remember if that was a NSCA or a USSCA event. It was before NSCA partnered with NSSA to stay afloat.

I generally bought these at a shoot where many of the Euro-shells were sold considerably cheaper than domestic brands to gain market share. Federal was my at home brand of choice for many years as I could pick up Gold Medals for a little over $2/box. I never stopped loading 12 ga as 7/8 oz loads were not commonly found and were more expensive when found. I could punch out a box for around $2.25 and it gave me something to do when it was windy and below zero in the winter or during slow times at work.