Little Skeeters gauge reducers

[Jonny English]

Morning all.

I have a Yildiz 20 gauge that I have been trying to get my 11 year old son to use to learn to shoot.  He set off very well initially but then started to get recoil shy, even with the Hull 23 gram subsonics.  It got that bad that he was starting to get trigger freeze and was refusing to pull the trigger.  All was pretty much lost.

I somehow came across a thread on the internet somewhere about little skeeters gauge reducers.  20 gauge sleeve that accepts a 410 cartridge.  I bit the bullet and ordered a pair from America from Brownells UK.  6 days later they arrived.

Took my lad out with them this weekend, what a difference it has made.  Got him some 3" 16 gram 6's and you can hardly feel them go.  Superb little bits of kit.  Only down side I can see so far is that they produce quite a lot of soot and you have to push the empties out of the sleeves with a pen or rod each time to reload.  But as a tool to reduce recoil or a bit of fun they are amazing for the outlay. To be fair the 410 cartridge performs pretty well too, they seem to pattern just the same diameter, just less dense, but they still broke clays very convincingly out to 30-40 yards. If anyone has a junior they wish to train on light loads or need to drastically reduce recoil for any other reason they are well worth looking at for  cost effective option.

 

[Skeetfreak]

Sub gauge inserts are superb bits of kit - be it the simple little skeeters which eject the whole unit or up to the full length tubes from companies like Briley or Kolar.

There is another option kicking around called - Briley Sidekicks (there also used to be another version called Chamber Mates made by Seminole - do NOT buy these as they are no longer made  / supported) - but these link to your guns ejectors and will save "knocking" the cartridge out each time as they will eject the cartridge.

You will see second hands sets of Briley Sidekicks kicking around on the skeet circuit as they are often a cheap / easy way to get into NSSA skeet. These will convert a 12 gauge to any of the three gauges (20, 28 and 410).

There is one slight issue using this kit over here in that most european / english ammunition is steel headed / brass plated and expands differently so we see way more "jams" where the tubes do not eject correctly all the time. Search around though and use correctly fitted tubes and it can be made to work reliably. Plus all NSSA skeet shooters nearly always carry a 8mm brass rod about 6" long around which they "drop" down the tube to knock the cartridge out with if they do get a "jam".

The higher end ammunition (Winchester / Remington / Federal etc) over in the states is proper (or was) brass so does not suffer with this issue so much if at all.

As for .410 cartridges having seen what 14gram 9's do on a skeet field at up to 25yds (second shot of pair on 4) then i have no doubts they are capable of breaking 30/40yd clays.