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Shotguns – most people either love ‘em or hate ‘em, especially in action shooting sports like 3-gun. It’s not so much the blasting away that bothers folks so much as having to load them.
In most cases, shotguns have the most limited capacity of any gun used in an action competition. At most, they’ll usually hold no more than 12 shells at a time. That means that it’s likely that competitors will need to reload their shotguns with at least a handful of rounds in most stages. Some competitors complain that their favorite multigun matches have become more of a shotgun reloading contest than anything else.
Unless you are shooting a box magazine-fed shotgun like a Saiga, reloading a shotgun requires stuffing shells into a long tube. And you’ll need to do that as fast as possible without dropping them because of course, it will probably be on the clock. Fortunately, there are several good ways to do that.
Load-Two and Quad-Loading
The most common way to load shotguns in modern action shooting is either the load-two (or duaload, or twin-load) or its close relative, the quad-load. As their names imply, they are methods of loading two or four rounds into a shotgun at a time. Load-two in particular is relatively easy to pick up even for new shotgunners and is a great place to start if you’re not sure what technique you should choose. The equipment needs are fairly basic: a shotgun that has a loading port that supports load-two or quad-loading, and an appropriate shell carrier. Shotguns not made for competition often have narrow loading ports that are good enough to get shells into, but not at the speeds and with the movements required to make these loading methods work. You’ll need a gun that has a larger loading port with the edges smoothed and chamfered a bit like a magazine well on a pistol. It’s also often a good idea to have the notch at the end of the lifter welded closed to avoid pinching your thumb.
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$85
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Prices accurate at time of writing
Prices accurate at time of writing
Available Coupons
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25% off all OAKLEY products – OAKLEY25
Copied! Visit Merchant
Caddy Loads
The old-school way of loading a shotgun, which you still see, uses caddies that stack three to four shells side by side. The shells sit horizontal on the belt, and all three or four are grabbed at once with the strong or weak hand. Normally, the hand not grabbing the shells supports the gun under the shooter’s strong side arm, but some shooters will continue just holding the gun on their shoulder as they load. Either way, the loading port stays facing the ground or sideways as the rounds are fed into the gun. Caddy loading requires a lot more dexterity and is a little bit slower than load-two and quad-loading. Even with a lot of practice (and it’s needed!), it can be difficult to master. It’s still a useful skill to have, though. Caddy loaders are inexpensive and you can sometimes fit more shells on your belt with them than with other carriers. They can also be a convenient way to separate out buckshot or slugs if you have a stage that requires just a few of those types of shells.Just One More Round
The best tip I can give you to load shotguns like a pro 3-gunner is to minimize reloading in the first place. That’s because misses are so costly in terms of the time needed to reload. If you hit your targets one for one, you’ll be able to avoid spending extra time loading over what your competitors are doing on the same stage. However, it’s relatively common to need to load just one more round during a 3-gun stage. It may be because of the dreaded miss. But the stage designer may have included just one more target than the starting capacity of your shotgun in order to make you reload. Or you might have run your shotgun dry and need to get a round in the chamber before loading more conventionally. In most modern, semi-automatic shotguns, the single-round reload is just a matter of getting a shell into the ejection port in the correct orientation and dropping the bolt. The fastest way to do that is to use a MatchSaverZ or Stage Saver. They’re plastic clips attached to your shotgun’s forearm by a screw. The clip holds a shell aligned with your ejection port so that the shell can be slid backwards off the clip and into the ejection port. When combined with an oversized bolt release button, loading that one round becomes a simple sweep of the hand back and forth.Other One-Off Loads
Sometimes, the reason you need to load your shotgun is because different kinds of ammunition are needed in a stage. You might need to shatter some clay targets with birdshot, hit some paper targets for score with buckshot, and whack a piece of long-range steel with a slug. There can be penalties, or even disqualification, for using the wrong shells on the wrong targets, not to mention the frustration of trying to hit a 50-yard steel plate with birdshot instead of slug. One strategy is to “candy cane” load the rounds you need in the order that you’re planning on shooting the stage. You’ll just need to keep count to make sure you’re using the right shells on the right targets.
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