I ordered a Indian creek .665 to replace my kicks 665 since everyone is having really good luck with them. I shot a few long beards and wasn't too impressed barley breaking 100 at 40 yards in a 10 inch. So I put my old choke back in and shot and it was worse. Last year same gun choke and shell combo it was shooting pretty decent long beard 5 shot 3 inch at 40 yards was averaging 150 in a 10 inch circle. So I thought well maybe it's dirty took it home cleaned it good and shot again. Patterns were a little better but still not close to what I had before. So I went and picked up some federal tss 3 inch 9 shot and tried them. They didn't shoot great either I had right around 200 in a 10 inch at 40 yards. So last year I polished the barrel and it shot pretty good like I said so I repolished the barrel and just shot a long beard through it and no good. Idk what's going on with this gun. The gun is a rem 3 inch with a 24 inch barrel Indian creek .665 choke.
Has anyone had such a thing happen? Gun shoots good one year then next it won't shoot anything you try? I'm going to borrow a few chokes from a buddy and try again.
I have had problems ( and there are others - with several posts about them) with consistency in the Longbeards. When they first came out I tried some 3.5 inch #5's out of my Remington Supermag and my Winchester Sx3. I was getting numbers around 175-185 in the 10 inch at 40 yards. I used them for 2 seasons and bought some more. I shot both guns before season and they were all over the place as far as numbers. The first shot was around 120 - so I took another shot and was a little better (130's) . I shot a third time and it was worse. I tried the Winchester and had equally bad results. Others were reporting similar experiences. After the hevi- shot lot number inconsistencies, then the longbeards- I decided to load my own.
As noted above, here are two threads I started that detail the problems I had with Longbeards:
http://oldgobbler.com/Forum/index.php/topic,94113.0.html
http://oldgobbler.com/Forum/index.php/topic,95373.0.html
I purchased two boxes of each (3" and 3-1/2") Longbeard #5 earlier this year, but have not tried them yet.
Tons of problems with Longbeerds.
Now the federal tss should have done better too.
You said polished the barrel.
Make sure you clean it really good and get all that polishing residue out of it . Deep clean that sucker. denatured alcohol for the finish clean.
How did you clean your choke tubes?
I shot the tss through the kicks choke and I'm happy with it for now. Tss is getting too expensive to keep shooting. This was at 40 yards
40 yards
Looks like that will work just fine.