After shooting Contenders from '68 very heavily I bought an Encore as soon as they came out with 12" 454, 15" 22-250 and 15" 7BR factory barrels, and custom furniture with a hanger bar. Took getting 2 more factory 22-250 barrels to get one to shoot descent but not spectacular; the 454 was OK but nothing to brag about; the 7BR was amazing and the only factory barrel I ever owned worth the price of addmission. It rivaled all my XP-100's and Wichita's shooting BB IHMSA, was a 40X40 shooter from the first match that was also spot on for shoot offs (nothing could beat it). Ended up buying more frames and custom barrels for them over the next couple of years... but stayed away from anymore factory barrels and bought custom only. Loved the 10" 416 Rigby, the 223 did OK but nothing special and all the others in between couldn't do anything as well as my Contenders had been doing in spades for years. Almost kept one frame and the 7BR barrel, but had too many Contender wildcats that did the same or better, the 416 was just a toy I had no use for otherwise and I already had a bunch of cannon wildcat barrels for the Contenders, so sold all of the Encore stuff and never looked back at them again. The extra weight may help some with recoil with the handcannons, but with so many years shooting Contender cannons recoil was not a factor for me... as a rifle maybe a draw for some folks as well, but since my Contender wildcat handguns could do the same as any Encore rifle I figured why bother, so I never owned an Encore long barrel. They're all gone now except for one XP, and it will go as well when I get around to it. But it was a fun ride for about 4 decades.
