30" 32" or 34" barrels

The only advantage I have known over the years is that your pattern is tighter at a longer distance, so the bird can be farther out and you still have a decent pattern. BUT, if you take your birds sooner than latter the longer barrels might be to tight at the closer ranges. All depends how you take the birds. This is concidering that the choke is the same on all barrel lengths, as I forgot to mention.
 
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I have a 34 somewhere that I bought for my 870 like 100 years ago. Honestly never liked it found it made the gun real nose heavy and just didnot feel right. I shot it very little and went back to the ported 30" which I still use today
 
Almost everyone that I know and have shot handicap with shoot a 34" or longer hinge gun. I would say at least 10 to 1 of all others combined. A longer sighting plane and balance seem to be the easy answers. You really need to try one to see if it is for you. Balance can be an issue, but that can be rectified with the addition of weight in the right places.
 
HIGHRPM said:
The only advantage I have known over the years is that your pattern is tighter at a longer distance, so the bird can be farther out and you still have a decent pattern. BUT, if you take your birds sooner than latter the longer barrels might be to tight at the closer ranges. All depends how you take the birds.
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Most times pattern is not effected by barrel length, but rather by choke selection. longer barrels give you a longer sight plain so it is easier to make those longer shots with less room for error. Longer guns tend to swing better with alot of forward weight to help carry the gun throught the swing.
 
Beretta687EELL said:
Almost everyone that I know and have shot handicap with shoot a 34" or longer hinge gun. I would say at least 10 to 1 of all others combined. A longer sighting plane and balance seem to be the easy answers. You really need to try one to see if it is for you. Balance can be an issue, but that can be rectified with the addition of weight in the right places.
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Yes but a 870 pump with a 30" is the same overall length roughly as a hinge with a 34". A 34" on a pump or semi to me is a totally strange animal which is the combo I found real hard to control but to each their own
Chuckie's comments
http://www.chuckhawks.com/shotgun_barrel_length.htm
 
Well in my experience as a 27 yard ATA Handicap shooter

1. Longer sighting plane.....
2. Smoother swing and better follow through capability which translates to #3...
3. Easier to get the muzzle out in front of the target from the further back stations...

All that being said I was shooting 30" barrels when I got pushed back from the 25 to the 27 line in The Preliminary Handicap Event at The Grand American in 1999. The difference between having a 34" barrel vs a 30" barrel at 27 yards is extremely noticeable. For me, the longer barrel slows my swing down to a more stable, fluid motion and keeps me from getting too far out in front of the targets.
 
3macs1 said:
Hinge or pump spank??
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I was shooting a Browning Citori Plus O/U with 30" barrels...........after I got pushed back to the 27 yard line I found the 30" barrels hard to work with back there with any consistency so I bought a Citori Plus Combo, 34" single and 30" doubles barrels. I used the doubles barrels for singles(16 yd). I preferred the heft, feel and swing characteristics of them for the short range shooting but I much preferred the 34 single for long handicap. I sold both guns a couple years later and bought a TM1 Perazzi with a Terminator stock and factory 32" full choke barrel. Then two years ago I sold all my trap guns as I haven't been out trap shooting for some time. I would like to find a way to get one of those Golden Clays Citori Unsingle combos in a 32/30 set from Guns Unlimited in Nebraska and get back at it again.............

When I first started shooting trap in 1986 I couldn't afford an O/U or combo gun. I picked up a used Rem 1100 Tournament Trap with a Timney trigger and 32" Stan Baker barrel with screw chokes. Now that was a long gun to swing! The next summer I went to the Grand at the urging of some of the older fellows at my home club, then North Bay Skeet and Trap, and posted a 199x200 in the singles championship with that gun earning me a spot in the shoot-offs. There were 3- 200 straights and 10- 199's posted out of 3,678? shooters. I ended with a 10th place finish overall and the Hi Foreign Champion trophy. Oh and I shot the Preliminary handicap that year too from the 20, having only ever shot 300 handicap targets to that point, and earned 2 1/2 or 3 yards. The next day I earned another 2 1/2 yards in the Grand American Handicap Championship Event, whatever the maximum earns were for each event they pushed me to the 25 1/2 ......... at the 100th Grand in '99 I had to laugh because the earned yardage I received in the Preliminary Handicap would have put me at 28 if there was such a line............once you have earned yardage to the 27 you can never receive a reduction shorter than the 24 1/2 ever.......guess I wont ever see the front of the pad again!
 
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the spank said:
Well in my experience as a 27 yard ATA Handicap shooter

1. Longer sighting plane.....
2. Smoother swing and better follow through capability which translates to #3...
3. Easier to get the muzzle out in front of the target from the further back stations...

All that being said I was shooting 30" barrels when I got pushed back from the 25 to the 27 line in The Preliminary Handicap Event at The Grand American in 1999. The difference between having a 34" barrel vs a 30" barrel at 27 yards is extremely noticeable. For me, the longer barrel slows my swing down to a more stable, fluid motion and keeps me from getting too far out in front of the targets.
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And there you have it ladies and gentlemen. Sound advice from someone who has been there, done that and done it far better than most.
 
Thanks Spank for sharing. You are one hell of a shot and have a lot to be proud of. Trap was never a game I could master but have the greatest respect for those that did. Grew up watching John Giovannette shoot and he just amazed me.
The old man was a trap nut and since we were small boys would toss us in the old station wagon for a family vacation but we knew it would be at some meet somewhere. I picked up some patches at these meets which I still have somewhere but never was good enough to participate. Skeet I couild hold my own but not trap. I found this one today after I read your post and think I got that in Ohio ?? ( my uncle lived there )from a young shooter that was tearing the place up that year but all be dammed if I can remember his name. All I remember is I could not even see the target when he broke it. Pull/ bang that quick
You answered my question also why I could not handle the 34" barrel when everyone else could.
I was using a TC?? Trap I think 870 wingmaster with the mods of the day like Morgan adjustable pad , barrel porting, relieved forcing cone etc. However with the 34" barrel on it the length was 54 1/2" your 1100 with the 32 would have been 2" shorter and you mentioned you found that long.
take care and I hope you see the front of that pad again. Sorry for the poor quality pic, camera dropped, hoping santa gets me a new one
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3macs1 said:
Thanks Spank for sharing. You are one hell of a shot and have a lot to be proud of. Trap was never a game I could master but have the greatest respect for those that did. Grew up watching John Giovannette shoot and he just amazed me.
The old man was a trap nut and since we were small boys would toss us in the old station wagon for a family vacation but we knew it would be at some meet somewhere. I picked up some patches at these meets which I still have somewhere but never was good enough to participate. Skeet I couild hold my own but not trap. I found this one today after I read your post and think I got that in Ohio ?? ( my uncle lived there )from a young shooter that was tearing the place up that year but all be dammed if I can remember his name. All I remember is I could not even see the target when he broke it. Pull/ bang that quick
You answered my question also why I could not handle the 34" barrel when everyone else could.
I was using a TC?? Trap I think 870 wingmaster with the mods of the day like Morgan adjustable pad , barrel porting, relieved forcing cone etc. However with the 34" barrel on it the length was 54 1/2" your 1100 with the 32 would have been 2" shorter and you mentioned you found that long.
take care and I hope you see the front of that pad again. Sorry for the poor quality pic, camera dropped, hoping santa gets me a new one
000_1327.jpg
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Thank you for the nice compliment, I think I have just been lucky.........

That is an awesome patch! Don't ever give that up. I know lots of the stuff at The Grand gets sold and given out but most guys there don't think anything of it and just toss it out afterwards. Grand memorabilia, especially from the days when it was contested in Ohio and New York before being moved to Sparta Illinois are going to be great collectors pieces some day if they aren't already. I have a 100th Grand Poster that was sent to all ATA sanctioned clubs. In typical fashion most of them stuck pins through them and hung them up in the clubhouse to advertise the shoot. One of our members did it to the poster sent to our club after I had opened the ATA package and set it aside. I scooped it up fast when I realised what he had done, rolled it up into a cardboard tube and have it put away. I bet there are not many left around!! I also have a White Flyer Target with the Southern Grand Moulded into it in a little cardboard box just as it was when it was given to all participants on the Handicap Championship day. My buddy was there and it was his, he brought it home form there, brought it to the club to show everyone then tossed it in the garbage. I scooped that up fast too!!

I have to add, when it comes to trap shooting I have been quite lucky. I must have been born with a Trap Gene because I go long periods, by that I mean sometimes years, where I lose interest and do not shoot at all then I decide to go out and do it again and I can usually be shooting a 96 - 98 average within the first 150 targets of practice.
Skeet on the other hand.....yes I can shoot it well enough, but I don't have the competitive gene in me when it comes to skeet so I don't care if I win or lose at it. It is purely fun for me. Trap on the other hand, I don't know what happens to me but when I step on that pad something switches on inside me and I am NOT going to let that machine beat me!! LOL....some would call that a character flaw I guess?! I think that is why I take such long breaks from it. I get to the point where I am not having fun with it and I walk away.....it's a catch 22 because damned it all I love absolutely crushing those targets. To make ink spots out of them from the 27 is very challenging but when it happens I can't describe the high that comes from it.

I am in the middle of moving but once I am settled and unpacked I will take out some of my memorabilia and post a few pictures for you to see.
 
HIGHRPM said:
The only advantage I have known over the years is that your pattern is tighter at a longer distance, so the bird can be farther out and you still have a decent pattern. BUT, if you take your birds sooner than latter the longer barrels might be to tight at the closer ranges. All depends how you take the birds. This is concidering that the choke is the same on all barrel lengths, as I forgot to mention.
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Barrel length does not affect your choke, it can and does affect your velocity and your sighting plane, swing characteristics.. The longer barrels actually slow the shot down a bit as they are offering more resistance to the shot string travelling down the barrel after all the powder has already been burned. If your barrel is 30" long and mine is 34" long the only difference in downrange choke performance if we are both firing the same loads and chokes is your will leave the muzzle 4" before mine but there will be no difference in choke/pattern performance on the patterning board. I have proven that over and over many times to guys on the range. I think personally one of the biggest under looked factors in pattern performance is the wad. A buddy and I used to do some waterfowl loads years back. Same hulls( Fed Gold Medal), primers (FED209) powder(SR4756), wads( Win Red 114/REM RP12), shot (Hummason Copper Plated lead 5) gun(870) and barrels(26"IC/28M and 30"F). The difference in pattern performance between the exact same loading with the Win wad and the Rem wad was night and day. The load with the Rem wad would actually shoot a tighter pattern from the 26IC barrel(70% avg)than the load with the Win wad from the 30"F barrel(65%avg). I made these loads for many years and ran thousands of them down range through everything I owned that I hunted with and always got the same results. I think the wad is the most under looked component in shotshell patterning, but that's just my opinion from my observations. And as for velocity, I had the same results almost every time as well. The 28" barrel would give us the quoted velocity in the reloading manual each and every time through our chronograph whereas the shorter barrel and the longer barrel would invariably be considerably different by as much as 200 fps at times. I had a buddy who back in the day was one of the first I know of to have a Benelli, the original Black Eagle. It had a 24" barrel. He was in shock when he put some loads through my chrony and found out that his loads were averaging 290 fps less than the reloading manual quoted velocities and those same loads of his through my 28" barrelled Model 12 would be within 45 fps of either side of the quoted velocity. There is a ton of factors out there when it comes to shotshell performance.
 
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the spank said:
Thank you for the nice compliment, I think I have just been lucky.........

That is an awesome patch! Don't ever give that up. I know lots of the stuff at The Grand gets sold and given out but most guys there don't think anything of it and just toss it out afterwards. Grand memorabilia, especially from the days when it was contested in Ohio and New York before being moved to Sparta Illinois are going to be great collectors pieces some day if they aren't already. I have a 100th Grand Poster that was sent to all ATA sanctioned clubs. In typical fashion most of them stuck pins through them and hung them up in the clubhouse to advertise the shoot. One of our members did it to the poster sent to our club after I had opened the ATA package and set it aside. I scooped it up fast when I realised what he had done, rolled it up into a cardboard tube and have it put away. I bet there are not many left around!! I also have a White Flyer Target with the Southern Grand Moulded into it in a little cardboard box just as it was when it was given to all participants on the Handicap Championship day. My buddy was there and it was his, he brought it home form there, brought it to the club to show everyone then tossed it in the garbage. I scooped that up fast too!!

Hi Spank
I'm like you right now all my stuff in plastic tokes in the basement, lost my man spot for a new craft room for mama and going to have to build another but small.
Like I said the old man was a trap nut and I grabbed all the patches I could at the various events and even won the odd one my self in skeet. Have 4 small albums somewhere with a ton of vintage stuff but can only lay my hands on one right now as below. I know I have a few more grand patches from different years and will find them eventually.
If you want this one for your collection it is yours it belongs with a real trap shooter. Send me your mailing info by PM and after the holiday rush in january I will send it along, less chance of it getting lost then.
OH yes It does have some history as my brother remembered the young guy and unfortunate I didnot probally get it signed at the time. It was Britt Robinson out of Texas shot like 3 100's that weekend in the double was tearing the place up.
take care
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Thanks for the generous offer 3 Macs. I have every one of those there with the exception of the Red Dot Powder, Alliant Powder and the Bonanza Reloading Equipment patch. Yes I even have the skeet patches......and I earned them the hard way too!! I will PM you for sure. I have lots of duplicates in many different types, we will have to compare, maybe I can help you add something to your collection......:)
 
Something the 27yard guys were explaining to me this year: at 27 yards, the muzzle of the gun only moves a tiny amount, like maybe 8". So all the precise movement takes place within a small move, and the long gun helps with that.
 
adamg said:
Something the 27yard guys were explaining to me this year: at 27 yards, the muzzle of the gun only moves a tiny amount, like maybe 8". So all the precise movement takes place within a small move, and the long gun helps with that.
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And they are not steering you wrong there one bit. The shorter barrel requires a longer movement to get to the target and in doing so creates a condition where you can push out too far in front and overshoot the target due to the momentum in your swing. I would say 99% of my misses from back there were results of shooting ahead of or over top of the target due to that momentum.
 
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