Competition shooters can put a LOT of rounds through some guns. Outside of competition shooters, you'd really have to be wealthy or have a LOT of years of trigger time with a single gun to put that much ammo through one.
oneounceload is a long time contributor here and someone whom I respect. I can't imagine that he's making up his numbers -- but the 200,000 number is
hard to digest. It's been a long, long time since I made my own shotshells (more than 20 years) and I can honestly tell you that I do not know the dollars involved in shotshell reloads these days.
However... if I priced a box of 25 shells at a simple one dollar a box, then he's talking about
eight thousand dollars spent on ammo for just one of his shotguns. That's a serious number!
If we are talking about a round of skeet shooting with that shotgun... 25 shots fired per round. Over 15 years, that's shooting 5 rounds of skeet twice a week and not missing any weeks. Or going just one sunday a week and shooting 10 rounds of the game.
There was a time when I was in High School where I shot skeet twice a week... Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings. I shot four rounds each day, so 8 rounds a week. I only did that for part of a year. At that rate, I'd have to shoot for about 20 years to put 200,000 through one shotgun.
It's a lofty number but is certainly possible. And with a name like
oneounceload, I'm going guess the guy is a shotgunner by trade!
I have been logging ALL of my shots fired over the last 4 years or so, trying to keep a "round count" on all my handguns. I don't have any numbers from before I started logging them, so I know that all of my handguns that are older than 5 years old actually have more rounds through them.
My numbers show me that most of my handguns have between 1,500 and 3,500 rounds through them. While I have more... the guns that see the most action number about 10 different handguns.
If I got rid of ALL of them except for one, I could probably muster 100,000 rounds over the period of about 10 or 12 years... assuming the gun could take all that action.
Typically, when someone throws out a number that seems ridiculous, I simply get out the calculator and do some punching. The guy who claimed 100,000 from a G17-- I'd find out when he bought it. That's the best tell right there. If he got it in 1985, that's 3,800 shots per year. Not cheap shooting and dang near impossible if you have other guns that you love. But yes, it's quite possible. I've absolutely taken many more than 3,800 shots this year, no doubt.
But all in one pistol? And then... every year for 26 years? It's hard to believe. Certainly possible, but sounds like artistic license.