Thread: Trap loads for semiautos

I use a Benelli M2 for pest control, and sometimes use it for skeet and sporting clays.

In the past, using Falcon V1 or Fiocchi TT1 I'd have an occasional cycling issue (1 in 50 maybe) whereby the second shell wouldn't chamber, and I presumed the "jam" was caused by the V1 and TT1 not quite being 'powerful' enough to cycle the inertia system. Changing to Falcon Club 28 solved the problem (Falcon Sport Steel also gives no problems).

I can typically gauge how 'powerful' the shells are by the distance the empties eject. V1 and TT1 almost fall at my feet, Club 28 about 800mm away, Sport Steel, about a metre. The last sporting shoot I attended I shot about 200 rounds of Club 28 without a single malfunction.

At the sporting shoot a SA guy was trying to flog off Blasers and had a try-before-you-buy setup on one of the DTL traps. I tried a Sauer & Sohn SL5 semiauto and he provided 4 shells to use which were Clever T2 Competition shells. Of the 4, 2 failed to cycle the action properly. The action is a Benelli clone, ie inertia system. (Nice gun for $2,500). I also tried 4 of the Club 28s I had in my pocket and had no malfunctions.

Anyhow, he sponsored the sporting shoot and I won 5 boxes of those Clever shells and I used them last weekend at a DTL shoot. First thing I noticed was the felt recoil was fairly significant compared to the Club 28 when fired from my U/O trap gun (a DT10 which has a fair weight to it). After the competition shoot (for shits and giggles) I tried the M2 on 25 minis using the Clever ammo. Empty shells were landing at least 2 metres away which suggested they were more 'powerful' than the others, but I still experienced 4 feed failures in those 25 shots. (I also nailed 23/25 minis, way better than I did with the U/O)

So, my question, is it possible for a load to be really short and sharp but not have sufficient energy to cycle the action as opposed to a load which is not as sharp but more sustained? I can't reconcile the distance the empty shells landed, the apparent heavier recoil but still not reliably cycling, not just my gun but the Sauer too. In my gun the second shell (which didn't load) was on the elevator but it seemed to me the bolt wasn't thrown back far enough to store the necessary spring energy to push the bolt forward, lift the elevator and load it. Yet the bolt clearly was coming back violently enough to fling the empties a long way?

Thoughts?