I’ve been looking at the real use of shotguns in the wild west and it seems like they are badly mis-represented in CAS stages. Almost every CAS stage that I've ever shot, ended with the shotgun. Yet, from what I can find in the history of the old west, shotguns, while certainly used, were not exactly as widely used as in say “3:10 to Yuma”. Also, in most cases, the shotgun was almost never reloaded under fire.
Three classic examples of this are: The gunfight at the OK coral, the Killing of Bill Brocius during the “Revenge ride” and the jail break of Billy the Kid. To refresh everyone’s memory: Doc Holiday emptied the shotgun he was carrying into Tom McLaury, dropped it and then drew his pistol, Wyatt Earp emptied his shotgun into Bill Brocius, dropped it and then drew his pistol and Billy the Kid shot Bill Ollinger with both barrels of his own (Bill’s), 10 gauge dropped it and rode out of town….leaving the shotgun at the scene.
This tends to make me think that more realistic stages should be drawn up with the shooter holding the shotgun at cowboy port arms firing two rounds and moving on to other weapons. Much like the OK Coral and the shooting of Bill Brocius, after two blasts from a shotgun, it was abandoned and people went for rifles and pistols to finish the action. So should we!
And, NO, I'm not recommeeding dropping the shotgun after it's been used!
That would be a major safty violation.
Bruce