I bet we do JJ, I bet we do. I've had guns all my life down to pre-school due to the best Daddy a kid could ever have. We hunted and fished every chance we had. Over the past years I kinda got into other stuff like horses, then drag cars and let my love for guns go to the back burner. Now with the US being attacked by the left my wife and I have gone nuts buying weapons and ammo. Never had a red dot until I got a Saint Victor in .223 6 weeks ago, then got an FX 9 and put a dot on it. Now I want one on my new Hellcat I'm gonna get in 2 days. BTW I took note of your competition using a Thompson Contender. I have a TC, in .221 and 44 mag.....didn't want em too close together, did I?? Where can I find a .223 barrel for the frame/grip that I've had for 40 years? Thanks in advance.
Everything you wrote is about same as mine, except I never got too deep into drag cars, but coincidentally did race the round-d-round circuit around the SE for a few years, and never did slack off on the guns. I've hunted, fished and/or shot competition for most of my life so I've always had many guns of various sizes and uses. I'm also an ardent airboat fan as well as a certified scuba diver for many years.
Also worked around horses a good bit. When in high school I would ride and break halter/green broke horses for a dude ranch hack line. Well, they broke me as often as I broke them. LOL! Not a full time gig but made most of my high school time spending money that way .... that and shooting pigeons out of and around the ranch barns. Here's a funny tid-bit for ya. The boss originally was paying me 1 cent a bird to shoot them and was having a ball. Then in a few months I realized it was costing me about 1 1/2 cents for the ammo to shoot them. The laugh was on me I guess.
But we better get back to gun stuff for now since this is a gun forum. I have a .223 bbl for one of my Contenders (Gen 1), but it's a 22" bbl for the Contender carbine conversion. Bought it way back in about the mid to late 80's. The kit came with the longer bbl, a longer fore end, and a rifle type stock. You would just change out those pieces for the regular Contender pieces to convert from a handgun to a small rifle. And just like the handgun, they were deadly accurate.
It was kind of tricky owning one of those way back then because the ATF couldn't decide how to classify/treat them. If you used the rifle stock and a handgun bbl, you had an illegal short bbl'd rifle. So you always had to keep that in mind and always use the appropriate pieces when switching it out. I solved that issue by simply buying a dedicated frame for the conversion and just left it as a rifle all the time. Still that way today with several calibers of bbl's. And last I heard, the ATF had finally agreed it was a "conversion" and could be in either configuration as long as you were in the process a converting it. But once you took it outside to shoot, it had better be right.
I also have a .22 cal and a 7mm08 22" bbl for it, and did have a 20 ga shotgun bbl. Sold that many years ago. But as for a .223 in 8" or 10", man I don't have a clue, but I will look around. Still have a lot of friends who use the Contender quite often. In fact for the last 10-12 years I hunted, I often carried my Contender in a long, hang down, shoulder holster. Even with the 10" bull bbl I typically used, it would hang almost from my arm pit to my belly button. Took many white tailed deer and many, many more feral pigs. If I do run across a bbl you might like I'll let you know. How about one of the 14" bbl's, would that work for you? Oh yeh, I'll need to know if your Contender is a Gen 1, 2, or 3. 1's and 2's will interchange IIRC, bu the 3rd gen is a little different I think. Not certain that's the way it is, but close. It may be that the 2 3 genswill interchange and the 1st gen is the orphan. I'll know for sure later, but right now all I need is which gen you have.
OK, one last thing before I go. Earlier today I ran into another old codger on the forum, and get this, he's older than both of us. Goes by the name Grump. Boy, do I know just how appropriate that name is, huh? Not for him ..... for me, at least according to the wife.
Anyway regards,
jumpinjoe
EDIT: to add BTW, the old man Grump is 85 years young. Kind of makes me feel like a young whipper snapper, how 'bout you?