Cowgirl Corner: quick look at the TC Contender

[North Country Gal]

Been shooting a bit, this week, and, yup, some of it was with a Contender. Anyway, thought I'd share how this platform works for those who have never shot one.

Basically, you have a frame and interchangeable barrels, as seen with a frame and two barrels in the pic, below. To change barrels, unscrew the forearm, knock out the frame pin and remove barrel. To change to the other barrel, put the barrel in frame, replace the pin and forearm and you're good to go. Talking about a minute if you're in a hurry, two if you're not.
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The beauty of the system is those interchangeable barrels. Again, in the pic, we have an octagonal 22 LR barrel and a 30-30 barrel. No kidding, here, one really is a 30-30 barrel and in a very light octagon barrel, to boot. Change your Contender from a plinker to serious deer medicine in a minute or two. That's the beauty of the system. You can go from a 22 to a 30-30 and even heavier, up to, and including a 45-70 with factory barrels and even beyond the bone crunching 45-70 with some custom chamberings.

Those barrels were made in all kinds of configurations and chamberings over the years of Contender production. Here's two Contenders I shot, this week. I could have just used one frame for both barrels, but I collect Contenders and have plenty of frames, so I have the luxury of keeping various rigs, setup and ready to go. Top Contender is wearing a 10" octagon barrel in 45 ACP and it wears a vintage TC 1.5x scope. Bottom gun is a later Contender wearing a 14" round barrel (known as the Super 14 in Contender lingo) chambered in 223. It wears a Leupold 2.5-8x pistol scope.


Two very different Contender rigs and I shoot them, differently, too. The light octagonal barrels make the Contender an easy to shoot offhand pistol. The 45 ACP barrel is one we recently found, so just wanted to do a quick sight in test. I pulled one out of the black, here, but just wanted make sure the barrel was up to snuff, Contender-wise. It was. Will return another time for more fun and economical shooting with this one.


The big Super 14s are too heavy for me to shoot, offhand. They're primarily long range bench shooters. Trust me when I say, you want to be careful about challenging a Contender shooter with one of these rigs to a shooting contest. Here's why. Shot this week at 100 yards.


That's it. Simple, super versatile and super accurate. That's the TC Contender.

[ESquared]

Really amazing. Will have to dig deeper and research them. What's the approximate age range of your collection of these?

That 223 at 100 yards is crazy good.

Pretty fascinating stuff, NCG, thanks for sharing.

[North Country Gal]

You're very welcome.

The first Contender appeared in 1967, but was not wildly received by the shooting public. Pretty much a curiosity at the point. My earliest rig is this 1969 vintage with a 45 Colt/410 barrel. This one came with the box and will not get shot.


Starting in the 70s, two developments in the shooting world made the Contender take off like a rocket. One was the newly introduced sport of silhouette shooting. Some say the Contender really owned the sport. Probably a bit over-stated, but at one point, some 85% of the champion handgun shooters were using Contenders. The other development was the big push in the 70s for hunting with a handgun. Again, the Contender really changed that shooting sport, too.

The last year for the Contender was 2000, as with this late 90s rig.


Meanwhile in the 90s, TC introduced the bigger and heavier Encore and the G2, with the G2 going on to replace the Contender. Here's the G2, sill being made, today, and still able to use all those old contender barrels. Different action, though, as far as how it works.
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[bandit1250]

I believe the writer/hunter Bob Milek from Wyoming had a lot to do with the popularity of the Contender for the hunter and for the long range varmint shooter. I called him when I was in Wyoming shooting prairie dogs back around '84 or '85 and was going to pay him a visit but he was out on a prairie dog shoot. If memory serves me right the town was Thermopolis. That man loved his Contenders. Steve Herrett was another big Contender shooter and developed some hot rod cartridges for Contender barrels to be chambered in. Herrett grips for Contenders are probably collector pieces today.The good old days of those kind of writers is long gone. The new magazines, I don't even pick up with nothing but tactical guns in them. Wish I would have saved all my magazines with Bob Mileks articles especially on Contenders. It would have been mind blowing to see how many Contender combinations Bob Milek actually may have had and some chambered in some rare cartridges.

[North Country Gal]

I believe the writer/hunter Bob Milek from Wyoming had a lot to do with the popularity of the Contender for the hunter and for the long range varmint shooter. I called him when I was in Wyoming shooting prairie dogs back around '84 or '85 and was going to pay him a visit but he was out on a prairie dog shoot. If memory serves me right the town was Thermopolis. That man loved his Contenders. Steve Herrett was another big Contender shooter and developed some hot rod cartridges for Contender barrels to be chambered in. Herrett grips for Contenders are probably collector pieces today.The good old days of those kind of writers is long gone. The new magazines, I don't even pick up with nothing but tactical guns in them. Wish I would have saved all my magazines with Bob Mileks articles especially on Contenders. It would have been mind blowing to see how many Contender combinations Bob Milek actually may have had and some chambered in some rare cartridges.

As a someone who fell in love with handgun hunting from the very start of my shooting career, I read everything those two, and more, wrote, but especially, Milek. He was my favorite. The good old days of those writers who actually lived and breathed hunting and shooting is long gone. You're right.

[bandit1250]

Good gun writers/hunters are probably more rare than die hard Contender lovers today.

[North Country Gal]

Couldn't agree, more.

[Henry88]

Great how the sights/scopes stay with the barrel and remain sighted.

[CT_Shooter]

Wish I would have saved all my magazines with Bob Mileks articles especially on Contenders. It would have been mind blowing to see how many Contender combinations Bob Milek actually may have had and some chambered in some rare cartridges.

Bandit, you may find some of his writing in the online archive of American Handgunner magazine. The archive is in PDF format and includes magazines from the first issue published in 1976 through 1988.

https://americanhandgunner.com/classic- ... -editions/

[Swigs]

I also am a contender fan. I have a 32 h&r 357 357 max 44 45 colt only 22 barrels in 10 & 12 inch and a 223 for ground hog. I shoot bowling pins at 30 yds. Use to ne I would get aperfect 25 every time I shot my tc. Not so much anymore. But its not the guns fault. They are great .