Shooter NO. 2: Slick but Sick 686
“No. 2” is a two-time national champion title holder who doesn’t usually shoot a wheelgun, but is pretty darn good with one when he does. A week before IRC he and I had been to a 50-person shooting contest where he had used his 4-inch S&W 686 to knock me down to 2nd place, beating me on the group-size tie-breaker by 1/8 inch. He and his gun had both been running fine, and when I shook his hand I told him, “You look ready for IRC to me!”
And he was… until the big match itself, where his gun started going “Bang, Click, Bang, Click, Bang…” The cylinder was not locking up in fast double-action play, and after the second stage he gave up on it and borrowed Shooter No. 4’s spare revolver, another 4-inch L-Frame Smith. By then, though, he had lost what his brother shooters estimated as 20 seconds, and what might have been a winning score finished down in high D Class. The failure turned out to be in the cylinder bolt.