Project Snow Goose

[Jmm14534]

Shot a round of clays today with my Mossberg Onyx Reserve. The weather in western NY is mild for a change. It’s like 40 - 45 degrees. No snow on the ground so I opted to keep the snow goose on the shelf. Once there is snow on the ground then the snow goose is coming out of hibernation!

 

[Jmm14534]

For those of you who are interested. I do appreciate your patronage on this subject.

It was an unusually nice day in western New York today. Super Sunday. About 50 F, no wind and the sun was shining. Crazy if you consider it’s the middle on February. Regardless of the weather conditions I had to pull the snow goose out of hibernation to give her a work out.

I’ve not touched this shotgun since the last time I used it in March 2022. For those of you who are counting I had 134 rounds through it as of March 2022 from its last deep clean. I put another 66 rounds through her today on the sporting clays course. Not 1 fail to fire. I had 3 or so fail to feeds which were my fault in loading the shell into the chamber. So after almost 1 year of sitting in the closet in a soft gun case and stewing on a 130 shots fired it came out of hibernation and performed like a champ. My shooting on other hand was not so good. I do think the snow goose likes colder weather and snow on the ground - as do I.

In summary, I have a total of 200 rounds through the shotgun since its last deep clean. On a time scale this is over 1 year. My personal opinion in that time is less of a factor than number of rounds . I want to get at least another 200 rounds or so before I break it down and clean it up again. At this point all looks positive and I am hoping to make the minimum 400 round count goal before cleaning.

Stayed tuned!

 

[Jmm14534]

For those who are interested. I do appreciate your patronage on this journey.

I had the opportunity to take the Snow Goose out for a round of sporting clays yesterday with some friends. That makes it about 3 months since it’s last outing and over a year since it’s last deep clean. I shot roughly 125 rounds yesterday. I had 1 fail to fire and no fail to feeds. The fail to fire was weird. It was my turn to shoot so I put one in the receiver and hit the bolt close button. Then I shoved one in the tube. Two report pairs. Pull - bang - click. The first round fired but the second didn’t. I pulled the bolt back and ejected the shell. I put it back in the receiver and hit bolt closed. Pulled that second target again and it went bang. Unfortunately I didn’t look at the primer, my bad, lesson learned. The gassing signature around the hand guard and muzzle is getting really dirty.

I’m now up to 325 rounds and it’s still going strong. One more round and I’ll hit my 400 round goal. Keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[Jmm14534]

For those interested.
Saturday January 27, 2024. I took the Snow Goose out for a round of sporting clays with my group. It was an overcast day and in the mid 40’s. All the snow was melted. I fired 56 rounds with zero issues. The gun is now approaching 400 rounds (381 to be precise) since its last cleaning. Considering it has not been shot since April of 2023 and not been cleaned since December of 2021 I think that it is performing very well.
Our next outing will be super Sunday. I think I’ll bring her out for that as well and try and get close to 500 rounds before the next take down/cleaning.
I’m very pleased.