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I have been buying most of my ammo at Academy or Walmart. Other than .223 they seem to have a better selection and prices than Cabela's. I have bought 5 boxes of .380 over the last month at Academy and I have not seen it anywhere else. That is FMJ ammo not personal defense stuff. The only other pistol ammo I am buying is 9mm and .45 and that is getting pretty easy to find lately. I have been stocking up for a while now. When I need .223 for my AR it seems to be a toss up as to has the best deal.

Skydivesnake wrote:I must be the only person that doesn't like McBrides; they refused to serve me due to my British accent....

Sorry Skydivesnake, you must have encountered "Mr. Congeniality"!!! My husband and I have encountered him a couple of times and he's a real piece of work!! He must be related to someone there because his 'people skills' have a lot to be desired.

I don't believe for one minute you would have been mistreated by anyone else in the store. They really need to get rid of that guy.

I agree with what's been said so far about Cabela's and McBrides having similarly priced firearms.

NcongruNT:

You have a Stoeger Condor? You are the only person on the forum that I have seen who
has a Stoeger. I've seen them in the case @ Academy, but don't know a thing about 'em.

Are Stoegers the Turkish guns? Share with us what you know about Stoegers, if you are so
inclined.

SIA

surprise_i'm_armed wrote:NcongruNT:

You have a Stoeger Condor? You are the only person on the forum that I have seen who
has a Stoeger. I've seen them in the case @ Academy, but don't know a thing about 'em.

Are Stoegers the Turkish guns? Share with us what you know about Stoegers, if you are so
inclined.

SIA

Yes, I have a Condor. They are actually made in Brazil, not Turkey. The Yildiz are the Turkish guns, and you can only find them at Academy.

Stoeger is owned by Benelli, and that was one of the big reasons I bought the gun. As far as utlilitarian O/U guns go, I found them to be the best choice. Remington has a series of inexpensive O/U guns that it sells, but you won't find much info about them, and short of a google search, you won't find them on the Remington site, either. Even then, they don't give MSRP or really any details on the guns. Remington's unwillingness to stand behind these guns publicly is why I declined to go with one. By contrast, you can find everything out about the Stoeger guns from the website, including pricing.

I've been quite happy with my Stoeger so far, and it has performed very well. It is pretty basic, and doesn't have auto-ejectors or a selective trigger. You can get these features (and a nicer finish) in the Supreme versioin of the Condor, for about $200 more. The trigger is a little different, in that the second shot uses the recoil from the first to set. This means that you can't dry fire both barrels like you would a normal single-trigger O/U. You can get the second barrel to fire if you cycle the safety in dry-fire. When shooting live ammo, this isn't an issue, naturally, and the gun has worked flawlessly for me.

Instead of ejectors, it has extractors, which basically pull the shells out far enough to pull them by hand I actually like this for bird hunting, as I don't have to look for my shells to pick them up after I open the action to reload.

The gun appears to be well-made, and all the surfaces mate up beautifully. The gun was very tight when I got it, and required significant effort to open the action. I gave it some gun oil and it loosened up some, and I'm sure it will loosen up more with time. The safety is somewhat gritty, though my guess is that it will probably smooth out with time, as well.

It takes standard screw-in chokes, and comes with one modified and one improved choke installed.

I've found several folks here and online that say they don't last very well past several thousand rounds. Personally, this is a non-issue for me, as I don't shotgun nearly that much, and simply needed a utilitarian O/U for bird hunting a few times a year and the occasional round of skeet. For $350, I find the gun a great value.

I also wrote a blog post about it here:

http://therealnecessities.blogspot.com/ ... ondor.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

When I get the time, I'll be writing another one with my impressions from using it with shooting skeet and dove hunting.

Cabela's is OK . . . IF you use the $20 off coupons they sometime post on line, and IF you take advantage of the "$150 in Cabela's Bucks for a $500 purchase."

Skydivesnake wrote:I must be the only person that doesn't like McBrides;

The few times I've been looking for something in particular, McBrides was the most expensive place in town, so I'm not a fan of theirs, either . . . and a few of their salemen are, well, misinformed about some of what they sell.

srothstein wrote:Yeah, Sportsman's Finest is high priced sometimes, but they did have the dual M-2 mounted on an anti-aircraft mount for only $80,000 last time I was in there. They have some other neat toys that no one else has locally.

As of a week or two back, they had an Anzio Ironworks 20mm cannon . . . looked a lot like a .50 BMG rifle on steroids.

I asked the guy behind the counter about it, and he said they'd concluded that the store didn't have anyone who was man enough to shoot it.

When I inquired "Where, exactly, can you shoot one of these?" he replied "Nowhere around here . . . but if you can afford the gun and the ammo, you can probably afford a big enough piece of land to shoot it on."

I've found Cabellas handgun pricing seems to run about $50 higher than the Academy Or even a couple of ranges and their people are not great at knowing what ammo is acceptable in the guns they sell. I bought a Taurus Judge at the one in Ft Worth asked the guy if they had any 45lc for it sure he gives me 2 boxes @ $54/box of 20 unfortunately when I got home checked it out & got ready to load it I found out Taurus recomendation does not allow 250 grain +P Buffalo to be run through it (of course ammo is Not Returnable). Can't even trade that garbage off at the gunshows, yeah the gun could probably handle the loads but if not I don't want to have it in my hands.

Their overall ammo selection is good but their prices and the fact that they limited to 2 boxes when the academy near my office let me have 5 boxes and they had 380 for $11/ box of 50. Made it not worth the drive to them.

...academy near my office let me have 5 boxes and they had 380 for $11/ box of 50.

You found .380 ammo for $11/box?? Yipee! Where? I mean which Academy? And what brand was it? That's a really good deal!

neilp wrote:

Skydivesnake wrote:.... they refused to serve me due to my British accent....

I would also choose pay at extra $10 on a $300 item and support a local business rather than one of the big box stores.

$10, yeah, $300, it just ain't gonna happen. My financial well being comes before any retailer, regardless of how much I like to shop there. I shop on line, find a price, add shipping and transfer fee if it's a firearm. I go to the dealer and tell them what I can buy that item for and if he can get me out the door for that price, I's rather buy local. The local shops know what they can sell a gun for and still make their required markup. If they can't do it, I tell them thanks, no hard feelings, and go home and order on-line. I saved $300 on a rifle that way, and that money sure looked a lot better in my pocket.
McBrides has so many good guns come through there as trades, Joe will work with you if you ask. There's a guy from Waco that comes down every week and buys the cream of the crop of used guns and takes them back to Waco to sell. McBride's has a tremendous overhead, and Joe isn't going to pass on a chance to sell a gun if you offer a reasonable price for it.

Joe

It's hit or miss on what they get in, ammo day in D/FW is Mon/Wed/Fri. I call stores convienient to my office, the wife, or the kid. If they recieved what I need we go stock up. The boxes I got were all 95gr FMJ. I don't remember what brand they were for sure only reason I remember what I paid was they were $30-50/ box @ the gun show the weekend b4.

Ended up getting 5 boxes in Lewisville all they would let me have, 2 @ NRH all they had left, 3 @ Cherry Lane all they had by the time the wife got there.