Steve133

Thanks for all the input, guys! Good to know that the locking race holsters that you see in USPSA all the time will work okay in 3 gun as well.... That would be awesome, thanks!

Oh well... I tried. Good luck on your search!

I wouldn't go as far as to say that an adjustable gas block is required if you're running a low-mass BCG, but I don't think you're really going to reap much benefit from the low-mass BCG without being able to tune the gas settings on the rifle. In fact, it might be counterproductive - I'd think that the addition of a low-mass BCG would only make the overgassing that most fixed gas blocks cause even worse. Are you dead-set on that specific handguard because you already have it on-hand, or are you just planning on buying it because you like it for whatever reason? If the former, then like SlvrDragon said, most manufacturers post mechanical drawings of their gas blocks for exactly this reason, so you're probably just going to have to check them all one-by-one until you find one that will work. If the latter, then I'd recommend taking your gas block selection into account when selecting a handguard - I've found it easier to consider those components as a system and select them at the same time, instead of picking one and then finding a model of the other that will work with I've already picked. All of that said... most "low-profile" adjustable gas blocks will fit under most handguards, but you definitely want to do your homework to confirm that before you buy anything.

I want to say that Aero Precision's folding irons are similar in size to the Troys, and typically go for about $100, sometimes $80 or $90.

Jumping in here, since I might be looking for one of these myself pretty soon... do you happen to have a picture or a link? I've checked Weber Tactical's website a few times and didn't see anything along those lines. It's completely possible that I missed it, though. Same request from me. I've got a couple of RHT holsters that I really like, so if they do make one that would work with a frame-mounted optic, that would be awesome. Are you talking about the Safarliand 014?

Fair enough. I don't think we're in substantial disagreement, I just lean more towards your "take your chances or accept some extra time" statement, including at the start. I don't want to derail the discussion more than I already have, but do you mind if I ask why the start position is so important? Not trying to poke holes in your argument or anything - we're basically on the same page, so it seems odd to me that there's that one discrepancy, and I want to make sure I understand it. What's the driver behind wanting that rule? Safety? Competitive equity? Consistency between shooting sports?

Concur that consensus seems to be that it is required in USPSA. Disagree that it should be required in 3 gun. Active retention holsters are essentially required to avoid dropping a pistol in many of the more physical 3 gun matches, and I agree in principle that the retention device should be engaged in most circumstances - not going to do you much good, otherwise. However, I also think there are just too many variables in stage setups for that to be a viable rule from a logistical perspective. The way I see it, you really need the retention device if you're scrambling around through the woods or contorting into weird rifle positions with a hot pistol holstered at your side. Doesn't provide any real benefit when you start with pistol, or if you re-holster after a pistol section to engage a handful of shotgun targets from a single standing position. You'd go insane trying to write a rule that covered all of those situations, and even if you could, the result wouldn't have an appreciable effect on safety. Competitive equity isn't really much of a factor either, since 3 gun stages tend to be long enough to make draw speed comparatively unimportant.

Conventional wisdom is that Invictus Practical and Carbon Arms are the gold standard. Invictus caddies release a tad more smoothly, and the Carbon Arms have slightly better retention. I've used both, and while I've found that to be true, it's not quite enough to be decisive in forming a preference - the Invictus has plenty of retention, and the Carbon Arms release just fine. Both offer decent modularity and configurability - you could probably flip a coin and do fine. If you really want to grasp for a reason to pick one over the other, decide whether you value retention or smooth shell release more. If you want to spend less, Taccom caddies are perfectly serviceable, and won't hold you back by any means... though it's a tad harder to yank 4 shells out of them while maintaining good alignment for a quad load. They're also a bit more limited in terms of configuration options. Lots of people also swear by the Safariland caddies, but I have very limited firsthand experience with those.

So, this is probably an odd question, but bear with me a second: where are you located? I'm not going to weigh in on the plastic vs. steel grip debate, because that's not something I'm an expert in (and besides, it seems to boil down to personal preference in many cases anyway). But if you're deciding between the relative importance of some kind of coating and another upgrade, your geographical location and the climate there might play more of a role than you'd think. I've seen/heard of plenty of guys (some of them in this thread) that will run a gun in the white for years with no rust issues... but they all live in the desert, the Midwest, or somewhere else relatively dry. If you live somewhere humid or somewhere closer to a coastal area, you might need to worry a little more about coating stuff to prevent rust. I live about a block away from the Gulf of Mexico, and everything I own will rust under a normal maintenance schedule. I either have to apply some kind of corrosion-resistant coating or oil everything literally every single time I touch it.

I had something similar happen to me - the rifle would consistently group well, but POI would shift by 10 MOA or so depending on the position I was shooting from. Spent months figuring out what I was doing wrong, and trying to correct whatever issue there was in my technique... and it turned out to be an issue with the rifle. Barrel nut wasn't torqued down enough. Not saying that's your issue, but it's probably worth doing a few trials to try to isolate all the variables. Try the Razor in the LaRue mount on your backup gun. Try the Strike Eagle in whatever mount it's in on your main competition gun. Swap the mounts, then try each mount/scope combination on each rifle. Just try every possible combination of rifle, optic, and mount until you've isolated the source of the issue.

It took a while for this to sink in for me, but I've finally come to the conclusion that you never waste money on good glass - you can only waste money on bad glass. Bottom-tier optics are actually the most expensive, because all they accomplish is adding $300-$400 to the cost of the quality optic that you eventually buy to replace it. Good glass is an investment; bad glass is a waste. So, I'd say that it's a hard pass on the Sightmark. Among the other options that you listed, you really can't go wrong. I currently use the Vortex Razor, and I'm a fan - good glass, forgiving eye box, excellent field of view, and no distortion on 1x. Like Stuey said, the guarantee is good for piece of mind, and one thing that's really started to sway me in the direction of a lot of Vortex products in general is how supportive they are of the community and the shooting sports. That said, I've looked through a few Leupold VX-6 and VX-8s, and they're nothing to sneeze at either. Much better shooters than me swear by them. Both the Razors and the higher-end Leupolds also seem to turn up pretty frequently on the high-speed, low-drag, cool-guy rifles in combat zones, if that's something that matters to you. No first-hand experience with the Vudu line, and I'm not sure how much of a following that they have. Thermal drift controversies aside, Eotech is a generally competent manufacturer, so I'm sure they're fine... but my two cents would be Vortex or Leupold.

The Glock and AR extensions are more common, but Tactical Sh!t at least sells their own spin on the CZ extensions (maybe other places, too, been a while since I've checked). I probably should have been a little more precise. It's not exactly a complete re-branding - they're clearly labeled and marketed as being made by TTI, there's just another logo on there in addition to (not instead of) TTI's, and there's not a substantial difference in base price. But the crucial difference is that TTI and most other niche competition-focused retailers very rarely do promotions or sales, but some of the resellers do much more frequently. TS, for example, is doing a site-wide 15% sale right now, Brownells does 10% promo codes almost every month, and Noveske does some surprisingly deep discounts on their webstore around big holidays. I mean... I guess that's just internet shopping 101 instead of some big revelation, but just throwing out there that the TTI extensions in particular show up a lot of places you might not think to look at first, sometimes for decent prices.

Yeah, homeboy's resurrecting posts from 6 months ago just to add a witty little bon mot like that. Not gonna throw anyone under the bus just out of the blue, but I'll pile on if the opportunity is there.... Now, to actually contribute: I mostly shoot CZs, and use TTI basepads for all guns they make them for. So does a buddy who mostly shoots Glocks, and I've never heard him complain. They're a tad on the spendy side... BUT I don't think I've ever paid full price for any of them. There are quite a few places that slap their own logo on them and sell them (I can think of Brownells, Noveske, and Tactical Sh!t off the top of my head, and there are probably more). All of those resellers and TTI themselves do a handful of substantial sales each year, so if you keep an eye out for those, you can usually find a pretty good deal - especially around major holidays. Site-wide markdowns of 20% to 30% are fairly common. Still a little on the expensive side, but easier to swallow.

There are certain styles of matches and stages that afford a decisive advantage to an Open shooter who can reload faster (or doesn't have to at all)... but I've been kind of surprised by how many matches where that isn't true. If there's any amount of substantial movement on the stage, a Tac Optics shooter who's proficient at quad-loading can keep the gun topped off without incurring much of a time hit at all. I'm not going to claim to be an expert or anything, but I've seen high-level Tac Optics shooters beat equally high-level Open shooters in big, natural-terrain matches where there was enough movement to help "make up" for shotgun reloads, and I've seen the same high-level Open shooters beat out the same high-level Tac Optics shooters on fast, short bay-style matches that make lack of reloads a more decisive advantage. I say all of that to say that based on my observations, reloading speed/frequency isn't always a critical advantage for Open. What is always a critical advantage is being able to run the gun faster, which you're not going to be able to do with a pump gun. I think that at best, having to run a pump on a shorter stage where you don't have to reload and someone shooting an auto-loader does comes out in a wash. At worst, you're at a pretty sizable disadvantage. I don't think you have to necessarily go crazy with an X-Rail or a $3000 custom Vepr... but I think you almost have to run a semi-automatic of some sort. M2 with speed loaders would be fine - you might be a little bit behind the power curve compared to the folks running high-end box-fed guns, but not by nearly enough to be decisive. Jerry Miculek seems to do okay with a Mossberg 930 and speed loaders....

I've tried both the 69 gr. and 75 gr. Prvi rounds, and my barrel didn't like either of them very much. Your mileage may vary, obviously. In terms of match-grade ammo that's less expensive than Black Hills reman, you actually have quite a few options. Both ADI Australian Outback 69 gr. SMK and CBC/Magtech 77 gr. SMK loads can frequently be found for between 50 and 60 cents per round, and I've had excellent luck with both. IMI's Razorcore line includes 69 gr. and 77 gr. options as well, and they can be found on sale for slightly less than the ADI and CBC stuff, but didn't work quite as well for me. PMC 77 gr. has a lower muzzle velocity than most brands of match ammo, but seemed to group pretty well for me, and you can find it in the 50 cents per round range if you catch it on sale. No personal experience with it, but lots of folks seem to like the Hornady Steel Match 75 gr. rounds. Typically, they're about 40 cents per round, and I don't think you can get preloaded match-grade ammo for any less than that.

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the subject, but while I'm still a thoroughly mediocre shooter, I have made some pretty decent strides in keeping an even keel after trainwrecks in matches. For a while, I tried the "just forget about it and move on" approach, but it doesn't work for me. At least, not in it's entirety. I have managed to just forget and move on from any sense of emotional investment in match results. Paradoxically enough, I've managed that by thinking about them more. I started a habit of doing a deep-dive into the results of matches, comparing stage video with what I could find posted by higher-ranked shooters on social media, compiling spreadsheets of long-term trending and best/worst stages in a given match, and generally trying to figure out which particular skill deficiencies hurt me the most. The goal was originally to just help develop a training regimen, and it's something that I do even for matches where I feel pretty good about the outcome. But I noticed something funny when I started digging into the results for matches that I'd been really angry about: even though I'd been trying not to dwell on it too much, the focus on the details was the thing that made the frustration go away. Delving into the technical details naturally led to a more clinical view that allowed me to divorce myself from any emotional response to the outcome. Some of that is probably the fact that a deep dive on the results usually reminds me that I did at least some things fairly well, but I think the larger part of it is just the fact that I have a naturally analytical mindset about most things, and simply understanding why something happened lessens the negative impact of it immensely.

Yeah, I had exactly the opposite experience with RCI working on my M3k. I'm in no way affiliated with them, and I'm certainly not going to claim that they're the only game in town for shotgun work, but I had a good experience with them, so I feel compelled to stick up for them a little. I contacted several different shops with questions about some of the work that I wanted done, and their customer service was by far the most responsive. A lot of people won't get back to you at all, or only after a delay of several days-weeks, but the RCI folks consistently responded to emails and phone calls on the same day. Also, the person talking to you is usually a CS rep who isn't necessarily a gunsmith themselves, and they'll just make things up, or get into a maddening telephone game where you ask a question, they ask the gunsmith a different question, and they give you an answer to yet a third question. As soon as I got into territory that the CS rep at RCI didn't quite understand, they admitted it and gave me a direct line to the machine shop so that I could talk to one of their smiths, who was able to quickly answer all of my questions. That experience was positive enough that it convinced me to spend my money with them. I sent the gun in in a FedEx shipping tube, and got it back in a larger, better-padded box - my only complaint about that is that the tube of ALG lube that they tossed in there as a freebie burst open during shipping, but I'd say that's more UPS' fault. I sent them the gun in the middle of SHOT Show, so I'm sure that caused a bit of a delay; even with that delay, the turnaround time on the work was about half of what the initial estimate was. They did all the stuff I asked, and fit and finish is great - I've never looked at Tim Yackley's gun in person, but I can at least say that mine looks like the picture on the website. It ran fine out of the box, looked good when I took it down to clean it after the first couple of trips to the range, and it's run in every match that I've taken it to (including this year's Texas 3 Gun Championship, which took place on a range full of moon dust that a ton of other shotguns choked on). I'm surprised and a little disappointed that they'd send something out in such a sorry state... but I agree that it sounds more like someone grabbing a half-finished project off the bench and sticking it a box by mistake than any representation of the work that they do. Based on my experiences with their customer service, I'm sure they'd have taken care of you if you contacted them.

Glad it's not just me. I've found that the UBR balances an 18" barrel with a light-ish handguard really well - puts the center of gravity just forward of the magwell with a loaded mag.

So, to answer the question that you're actually asking: if you are mounting a bipod without any intention of taking it off regularly, you probably want to go close to the end of the handguard, closer to the muzzle. To answer the questions that you didn't actually ask, but that might be relevant: In pretty much every 3 gun ruleset I'm familiar with, bipods are only allowed in Open, so if you're not ready to jump into the world of red dots on everything, I'd just leave the bipod off entirely. Even if you are going Open: I don't shoot Open, but I've squadded with plenty of Open shooters at a bunch of different matches, and I've never seen any of them leave the bipod on their rifle for every single stage. If it's not going to be useful in a particular stage, it's just dead weight. Everyone that I've seen uses some kind of QD attachment (M-Lok, Keymod, etc.) and will only put the bipod on if the stage calls for it - for example, if there's lots of long range rifle from a prone position. If you're doing that, then I'd imagine that the specific placement of the bipod will also vary from stage to stage based on any quirks of the position you're shooting from, though the "default" option is still being placed up front.

Thanks, guys! Guess I'll wait a little longer.... and if/when I get sick of waiting, either go with a slide-ride mount or order a stock one and break out the drill and tap set....

Sorry if this has already been answered somewhere else, but I couldn't seem to find it anywhere. I have a Tactical Sport with the frame drilled and tapped in the 3-hole Czechmate pattern. I'm thinking of dipping my toes into Open (mostly for 3 gun, so all I need is an optic). Since I've already got the frame that can support it, just picking up a frame-mounted optic mount seems to be cheapest/fastest option - I don't currently have one because the previous owner only used the mounting holes for a *thumb rest [generic]*. I can find the stock Czechmate mount easily enough, but I don't have a C-More, so it kind of defeats the purpose of taking a fast/cheap option when you have to buy a $300 optic for it. Since I do happen to have a Vortex Venom lying around, something that can accommodate one of those would be nice; a multi-optic option would be ideal. I know CZC makes one, but they've been out of stock for the few months that I've been watching, so I don't know if/when those are coming back. Does their 5-hole mount also fit the factory Czechmate 3-hole pattern? Or are there other options out there that will, either with a multi-optic pattern, or the Docter/Burris/Vortex pattern?

It seems like most of the people I've heard talk about them have mentioned the loading port, the machining on the barrels, and compatibility with aftermarket Benelli parts, in roughly that order.

Exactly what Snausages said. At the risk of oversimplifying, the Benelli M2 is the 2011 of action shotgun. In USPSA Limited and Open, there are tons of valid options, but everyone and their dog shoots a 2011. And similar to the 2011, it seems to me that some of that is due to the inherent quality of the platform (high quality fit and finish, reliability of the inertia-driven operating system, etc.), and some of that is due to the wide aftermarket support that comes with being the de facto standard. EVERY shop that does custom shotgun work will work on an M2, and there are tons of competition-oriented parts and accessories available. The Versamax has something of a following as well - my understanding is that gas-operated shotguns are typically a shade less reliable than an inertia gun, but the self-regulating system of the Versamax seems to work better than most. Aftermarket support isn't quite what it is for the M2, but there are still plenty of options out there. Anecdotally, the only failure of a Versamax I've ever witnessed was due more to the latter factor than the former - the gun spontaneously disassembled itself because the magazine extension wasn't threaded on correctly. So, tl;dr: M2 has the pros of an inertia system (reliable, generally requires less maintenance), build quality, and aftermarket support; cons would be that recoil will be a little worse, as it always is with inertia guns, and the expense. By comparison, a Versamax will shoot a little softer, and is a bit cheaper, but it'll require more maintenance/cleaning to work reliably and it won't have as much aftermarket support. If you don't want to jump in with both feet, then situation is vastly simplified. There are quite a few relatively high-quality entry-level inertia guns (like the Stoeger M3k and the Franchi Affinity), but most of the gas guns below the Versamax's level aren't that great.

So, upon firing, it's ejecting the spent case, stripping the top round out of the magazine, and then the bolt's not going into battery afterwards?

Just give it a few light passes with a needle file. I'm sure you could theoretically cause issues by removing too much material, but you'd have to try really hard. All you're doing is smoothing out the rough edges, you shouldn't need to remove much material at all.