Waterengineer
Glad to hear you have access to a place like Dewing's. Some additional food for thought...
BigJimP describes two ways to shoot 4-gun Skeet: The very popular tubed O/U with carrier barrel and four, closely matched, separate guns. Your concern about maintaining equal weight favors the tube method. These are not the only ways to shoot 4-gun Skeet.
We've already discussed a tubed O/U without a carrier barrel. This method often incorporates some supplemental weight when the tubes are removed. This option may seem more appropriate when the cost of the tubes and carrier barrel exceed the cost of the gun.
Instead of BigJim's four matched guns, some chose to shoot a four-barrel set -- one receiver with 4 barrels. The popularity of four-barrel sets has waned, over the years, to a point where they are no longer commonly available nor popular in competition. As with four matched guns, with a four-barrel set, the view down the .410 barrel's rib is different from the 12's -- which is bothersome to some folks.
Growing in popularity is shooting a tubed O/U in the .410-bore, 28-ga, and 20-ga events and switching to an auto-loader in the 12-ga events. This contradicts the uniform gun school of thought, but is supported by higher scores. Your tubed carrier barrel gun may be as physically uniform as possible when going from the .410-bore to the 12-ga events (the same stock, same trigger, same rib, etc.); however, the felt recoil is far from uniform. Many Skeet shooters feel the recoil difference between the .410-bore and the 12-ga is so significant that it overshadows the whole matched gun argument. In reality, the "matched gun" behaves as a different gun when factoring in the 12-ga recoil. In their heads, they segregate Skeet into two games; 12-ga and everything else. A low recoil auto-loader is selected for the big-gun events and the tubed gun for everything else. With this method you're shooting two different guns instead of four, and it's been a successful option for many shooters.
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