Sorry I didn't follow-up on this months ago.
I did take the repro to Argentina last June and had a blast shooting it. "Pun Intended"
Here's the way it broke down as far as the amount of ammo I ran through the gun is a fairly short amount of time. Before I went I shot the gun quite a bit at clay targets. Both trying to get myself into shooting condition and also hopefully to shake out any problems the gun might have. In doing so I ended up buying three different slip-on recoil pads before I finally settled on a lace up type with some sorbathane inserts so I wouldn't damage the skeleton butt and not beat the daylights out of my shoulder. I went through 2500 rounds during this practice in about six weeks time with no problems.
In Argentina we did six days of shooting & I managed to run 10,000 rounds through it in twelve shoots. Two of the shoots were over 2000 rounds each with the high one being just over 2500. The gun took all the abuse I could hand it. When you shoot 2500 rounds in a little over three hours you can imagine how many times the gun get's opened & slammed shut let alone how hot it gets. Overall it performed to perfection with only a small flaw that wasn't totally unexpected. I'm sorry to report that on the last shoot of the last day the left ejector malfuctioned and I had to finish the shoot using a different gun. It would still extract, it just wouldn't eject. But I'm happy to report that Brad Bachelder was able to work his magic and the gun is ready for the next fight.
The gun between practice and the hunt digested approximately 12,500 rounds in a fairly short period of time. The 10,000 rounds that were run through it in Argentina were done as fast as the gun could take them and all that happened to it was a left ejector malfunction. Other than that the gun is still like new including the case colors.
I'm very impressed at how well the gun did. I did this as a personal challenge to see what it would be like to be able to shoot as much as you wanted and to see for myself how well a Parker Reproduction could hold up to this kind of shooting. I'm now satisfied in both regards. I now know that I could be just as happy on an Argentina hunt shooting a thousand rounds a day or less and still be a very happy camper.
Would I take a repro again? You bet, in a New York second, but it would have to be a beavertail, double trigger gun just like the one I had with me. The barrels just plain get to hot for a splinter forearm. I'm not saying a single trigger wouldn't do the job, I'm just saying that with traveling this far and spending this much, Why take the chance on a single trigger messing up.
Once again I'm sorry for the late report!
Paul
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