I picked up my second Silhouette in May at the Denver gun show and put a couple rounds thru it in the back yard. I had the chance on Monday June 8 to take it with me to my long distance rifle shooting class and WOW! was I impressed. My instructor shot it first and hit 2 out of 6 rounds on the 20" steel plate. Now it's my turn and My first shot drops in right in front of the steel plate. It's hanging about 2 feet above the ground. My next two shots hit the plate. I have never shot a pistol at that distance before. The next three were close but no hits. I told my instructor that if I could shoot and hit at 100 yds that would be great but 200yds was pretty crazy to do. The owner of the range said that wasn't 200 yds it's 300 yds. WOW! again. It's amazing what the pistol will do with a good rest.

I shoot IHMSA silh... Our furthest target is the 200meter ram. l do reasonably well with a 629 Magnum Hunter w/factory red dot... However THE long range king among SILH is Freedom Arms silh model.. Scary accurate and likely the finest revolver made today.. All the top IHMSA revolver shooters use them...10 1/2'' barrel, hooded sites. $2500

The old 29 silhouette model can be well used for IHMSA Field Pistol class, which is shot standing out to 100 yards, but I don't know of anyone using it for Big Bore (out to 200.) Mostly due to the large throats in the cylinder (generally 0.432"-0.433").

You will get some good hits at range, but there will also be "unexplained" misses.

As noted above, the Freedom Arms rules Big Bore revolver class, with some old Dan Wessons in a distant second.

I persist in shooting my 29-3 in Field Pistol, but it's a long tough road getting scores in the mid-20s! A friend just picked up an 8 3/8" barreled 586 with the adjustable front sight and it shows lots of promise. I may have to transition as well if his scores climb much at all...

Great shooting . . . R

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Rachel
Grande Torina

The picture is cool. The club that I used to belong to held State Silhouette Matches. Many shot Contenders in 7mm TCU. Do gooders & neighbors got many restrictions placed on the club. Looks nothing like that now. Nothing like a long distance CLANG! Bob

jaymoore---ls that Cherokee Gun Clubs' field pistol range in Gainesville Ga ?? l think l have shot with you... You are a great shot too

Some of us love the Silhouette model for hunting. I deer hunt with one every year and have taken deer out to 142yds(via range finder). Then there are the safe queens!

jcelect

I do. "Back in the day" when my eyes worked better, I recall a particular shoot when it took me the first two misses on the first rack of Rams to get my "range", and then not only knocked down the remaining three on that rack, but all five of five on the second rack (got a plaque for that 5-5 rack of 200yd Rams).
That was with a box-stock 8-3/8 nickel Model 29 with factory open sights, although it was shooting prone which of course helped a lot (Creedmore position).
Chickens, Turkey's and Pigs?... Yea, I killed 'em big time.

I know that I should have been able to do as well with my 8" Dan Wesson .44 but never could catch 8 out of 10 Rams with it, and I'm pretty sure it was me, not the gun.

Ah brings back a lot of pleasant memories, unfortunately none of the local ranges do long distance hand guns anymore, but I have a friend with a farm at the end of a dead end road where we made our own range. A bunch of us get together there and still make the steel ring.
TC's, Dan Wesson's,Ruger Redhawks,Super Blackhawks and S&W 8 3/8" 's, still do the job. No plastic and springs need apply....

Looks like I hit a good chord with the Silhouette. I'm pleased to see and read all the comments. Also sounds like it has brought back some memories for some. I started and completed my 29-2 collection this past fall. I have the 29-2 and 29-3 Silhouettes. I think my next endeavor will be to collect all the different dashes. That would make a nice collection I think.

Back in the '90's S&W sold a 6-inch Performance Center M629 with the box label marked "HTR/CPTR". Which stood for "Hunter / Chicken-Pig-Turkey-Ram" -- silhouette targets in the order in which they appear. HTR was easy, but it took me awhile to figure out what CPTR meant. Product code on that gun was 170008.

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~ S&W aficionado in training ~

Reading the ad, viewing the gun and box, lt might mean ''Competitor''.
Barrel weights and all.. Htr/Cptr. Hunter/Competitor

I don't doubt the revolver could have good outings, and is more forgiving (but not ideal!) with jacketed bullets, which are more commonly used for Big Bore. But by the time I started playing in the mid '90s very, very few S&Ws were being used by the top competitors. Locally, only myself and D. Keng seemed to show up with 29s. And I definitely wasn't International class, much less AAA rated at the time! Then, the Dan Wessons were much more common, but I never could shoot either .357 or .44 DWs as well standing as I could S&Ws. Trigger pull and grip shape just didn't seem agreeable.

One factor that I fought with for ages (pre internet days) was substituting bullet hardness for fit with cast/swaged bullets. Currently my favorite load is with a dead soft swaged lead bullet. With the right lube, the revolver can be shot all season without cleaning or degradation in accuracy. Beaucoups cheaper than running jacketed and saves wear and tear on both revolver and operator.

Would be tickled to see more S&Ws on the line, though. Have had promising results with a couple of 629-6s, but still getting them dialed in as to final loads and intended courses. Thinking one may do for BB (Standing or Revolver class), however, there's a DW .357 Super Mag for which a small supply of brass was also recently obtained!


BTW, I like the "Chicken Pig Turkey Ram" theory! Even if "Competitor" is more probably what they had in mind.

That's a good guess, and it makes sense. The term "CPTR" appears across the top of silhouette score sheets as the major column headings. I've never seen anything official from S&W explaining what CPTR meant, even though quite a bit of contemporaneous add copy was written about the gun. Nothing in the SCoSW that I could find. It was always just called the HUNTER.

A quick Google search shows it also means........

Certified Professional Tarot Reader
Clinical Pharmacology and Translational Research
Center for Public Television and Radio
Current Public Transport Records
Capital Projects Technology Roadmap
Certified Proof Test Report

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~ S&W aficionado in training ~