30-30 Winchester that has not already been said many times through the years?ДЄs standard chamberings presently offered by T/C go, I consider it to be one of if not the best choice for use on deer-size game. I bring all of this up simply because if not for metallic silhouette competition, I might never have gotten around to becoming a fan of the Contender pistol. The load I used-27.0 grains of H335 behind the Sierra 160-grain spitzer boattail-toppled targets with aplomb, including hard-set rams. Only a few months after getting a 10-inch barrel in 7mm TCU, I used it in the South Carolina state championship and shot it quite well there. I switched to the 7mm TCU for production class immediately after T/C introduced that chambering. And at first, I used a 10-inch T/C Contender in. When competing in the unlimited class, I used a custom XP-100 chambered for a wildcat called the 7mm TNT. There was a time when handgun metallic-silhouette matches were quite popular in my neck of the woods, and I participated in them quite often. When exiting a 14-inch barrel at 2,400 to 2,500 fps and zeroed 3 inches high at 100 yards, any of those bullets is about dead-on point of aim at 200 yards and half the body depth of a deer low at 300 yards, where it is packing close to 1,000 ft-lbs of punch. Other excellent choices for this cartridge include Nosler's 125-grain Partition, Swift's 120-grain A-Frame and 130-grain Scirocco, and Hornady's 129-grain SST. It is capable of shooting inside 1/2 MOA in a good barrel, and its recoil is so light you can bump off varmints with it all day long, day after day, and never get enough. has a couple of other things going for it. When a high-ballistic-coefficient bullet of that weight-such as the Sierra BlitzKing, Nosler Ballistic Tip, or Hornady V-Max-is zeroed 2 inches high at 100 yards, it is good for a dead-on hold on prairie dogs out to about 250 yards, and with the intersection of the crosshairs plastered on the head of a groundhog standing 300 yards away, the bullet will land somewhere in its boiler room.ДЄs a Contender cartridge, the.

While 40- and 45-grain bullets exit the muzzle at higher velocities, I find that any good 50-grain bullet at 3,000 fps bucks wind a bit better and is more effective on coyotes. 223 Remington is the one I choose most often. 204 shoot a bit flatter, but barrels chambered for them have to be cleaned more often during hot-barrel critter shoots. When it comes to picking off varmints at long range with a Contender, my favorite cartridges are the. Caliber options in handgun, carbine, and rifle barrels range from. A single Contender has the capability of serving as an entire battery of firearms at far less cost than for a battery made up of other types of guns. The Contender has to be considered one of the all-time great firearms designs simply because it is capable of being so many different things to so many different people with so many different interests. In other words, the Contender was the right idea in the right place at the right time. On top of all that, it was affordable, and it proved to be extremely accurate. With its interchangeable-barrel capability and a hammer design that allowed both rimfire and centerfire cartridges to be used, the Contender was like nothing anyone had previously seen. It went on to enjoy great success primarily because each new option increased its versatility far beyond other handgun designs. Contender sales started slowly, but its popularity among hunters and shooters grew as each new option was introduced by T/C.

Tc contender barrels used