I shot pigeons and dove again last April in Cordoba. I was shooting a basic 12 gauge Ugartechea side b side with extractors and I had no trouble with shells sticking in the chambers.

Several in the party were using moderately priced 20 gauge over and unders with ejectors. They had multiple jams every day despite cleaning their guns daily.

Are extractors more reliable than ejectors?

Is there any reason the 20 gauges kept jamming versus a 12 gauge?

Is a side by side more reliable than an over and under?

You must realize that we were shooting 1000 shells a day for 5 days.

I am wanting to buy a 20 gauge for high volume wingshooting that is reliable and not too expensive. I am not interested in purchasing a semiauto at this time.

Ron Liljedahl

Although I have no experience with the high volume shooting you describe, I have some experience with 20 Ga SXS and O/U shotguns with both extractors and ejectors.

I see no reason at all why the gauge of the gun would make a noticible difference with ejection. With the O/Us, you must break the gun deeply enough so the bottom shell will clear the receiver on ejection, other wise the shell will not eject. In tight quarters this is more problematic than it is with SXS shotguns.

Selective automatic ejectors would speed the reloading process considerably for high volume shooting. If you reload, you may prefer the plain extractors as you have to hunt up the empties with the ejectors.

Simply cleaning the bores and chambers isn't enough to insure that the ejectors will continue to function properly, especially with the volume of shooting you are talking about. Crud can get into the ejector springs and ejector pathways in the action, inhibiting the proper functioning of the mechanism. All of these areas need to be kept clean, lubricated and be maintained seperately from the bores.

Variences and inadequate resizing of reloaded shells, and even the variences of new shells of some production runs and brands, can effect ejector function, so for all of these reasons, over time, I have found it simpler and easier to go with plain extractors instead of selective automatic ejectors. You will be a little slower to reload, but not all that much, and you will have fewer problems in the long run. Anytime a firearm is made to be more complicated, and selective automatic ejectors do complicate things considerably, you are more likely to encounter problems down the line...Rusty.

In short, yes extractors are "more" reliable than ejectors are as they are simpler, just cams no springs or releases. The bore should have no bearing on extraction/ejection unless the sizing of the shell heads is off as stated before. Cleaning the ejector mechanisms and oiling them works wonders.

Ejectors for me please. I wouldn't want to be pulling spent shells out of the chambers all day if I didn't have to.

I agree with Jhon Airala ,one of the most experienced dove shooting guides in my country ,but i always prefer auto shotguns for dove shooting in my country ,one auto that has two extractors is the old italin Breda i own one and after thousands of shells never failed .Juan

quote:

Several in the party were using moderately priced 20 gauge over and unders with ejectors. They had multiple jams every day despite cleaning their guns daily.

Are extractors more reliable than ejectors?

Is there any reason the 20 gauges kept jamming versus a 12 gauge?

Is a side by side more reliable than an over and under?

1) Not in a quality shotgun--

2) Nothing should make a 20 ga. more problematic.

3) There is no basis to deem a side by side "more reliable" than any other double gun.

A point that someone alluded to earlier needs to be expanded: An O/U has to break open at a wider angle than a S/S to clear the shell (either going in or going out) in the bottom barrel. If the hinge on the O/U is a little loose the barrels tend to swing closed slightly after ejecting, thus making reloading the bottom barrel impossible without manually opening the barrels a little wider. If this is the kind of "malfunction" you're talking about, then yes, a S/S is a little less problematic than some O/U's.

Generally, there are few reliability problems with either ejectors or extractors in either S/S or O/U configureations. Where you have someone else to pick up your hulls, the ejectors are faster, provided your shotgun isn't loose at the hinge and tends to swing slightly closed as described above.

Where is this place you were shooting? I can't imagine shooting 40 boxes of shells a day. Then for five days? How did you get your finger up high enough to pick your nose the second day? You have to get one really sore shoulder!

Don in argentina you can shoot 1000 shells in a morning at doves if you include parrots and doves you easily shoot 2000 shells ,in rice fields is common to shoot 1000 shells in a day at ducks .Juan

Just get a good quality auto like Benelli and don't worry. You can also over oil any gun and so you need to know just which parts to oil as none like to run dry forever.
Don...like Juanpozzi said...ammo goes real quick in a bird shoot in Argentina. One guy in our crew had 770 birds on the ground by lunch.
One 15 yr. old that had been there before us killed 5,198 birds with 8,000 in ONE day...still a record for the lodge. Before that a man had come down intending to set a record and killed 5,000 in one day. That record did not last long once the kid showed up. The kid was unaware of the record until about 2 PM one day when he already had over 3,200 birds down.
I don't see how you can do it but I do know with two guns and one loader you can shoot a bunch in a hurry.
I thought my arms would fall off one day before lunch but after a good lunch and a rest for awhile I back among them blasting away.
It was a super hunt of dove for two days and then on to a different lodge for two days of wood pigeons.
I can't wait to go back.
I always wear a Past Recoil Shield on my shooting shoulder plus real gloves (like a calf roper would wear) plus keep a wrap of surgical tape around my right thumb if I am doing all the loading of my gun. No sore shoulder and no bleeding thumb but plenty of fun, fun, fun!