Back in 2015 I purchased a GP100 Match Champion. The first few times out to the range resulted in a less than optimal set of experiences. On one of those trips I was practicing reloads with Comp-IIs and the small parts on the front lockup and extractor rod came apart and dumped on the ground. I found most of them, Ruger replaced a couple of small parts that are forever lost in the gravel of the range, and it's held together fine since then. Having put it all back together, I'm now a little surprised this doesn't happen more often. Lots of little stuff held in place by spring tension.
I then took it to the first revolver roundup, and again had mixed experiences. The Match Champion is fast and smooth on reloads, with the chamfered cylinder and plenty of clearance for Comp-IIs. It continued to shoot erratically for me though, and by this time I was figuring out that the factory stocks were part of the problem. They look great, feel great, and apparently for many people they work just fine. They don't work so well for me, to the point that I talked to Darryl about it on one of the breaks and got the standard answer that revolver stocks are very personal things. So true. I went to my Smith & Wesson Model 19-3 for the rest of the day, and the GP100 languished in the safe for a long time after that.
My average size hands apparently have unusual proportions, and I've since figured out through trial and error that smaller and especially narrower stocks just don't work well for me. Older K-frame target stocks I tend to do well with. I've had a similar evolution with semi-autos, I shoot better with big blocky USPs than with some of the newer more "ergonomic" alternatives.
Then there are the sights, discussed at length by others here. The factory Match Champion front sight has a green blob for a fiber optic rod, overlapping the edges of the sight and resulting in a fuzzy sight picture at least for older eyes.
I wasn't sure if the erratic performance was just from those factors, or something more serious. For quite a while I contemplating selling the gun. Recently though, I decided to dig in a little and figure out why it wasn't working for me. The start of that process was benchresting with various loads, and that happened last week.
I tried five different handloads, mostly 38 special with one light magnum load. Everything from 125gr coated lead and JHP to 148gr HBWC to 158gr LSWC. And I ran those through three revolvers off a bag, including one of my pre-lock S&W 19s that is a known quantity and consistently shoots well for me.
The results were a bit surprising. The S&W shot the smallest group and had the smallest mean group size, but just barely. The Ruger actually did pretty well, despite the S&W having a better trigger and better sights. The disappointment of the night was my brand new Colt King Cobra, and I attribute that entirely to the sights which were distinctly difficult to see in not very good range lighting. They might have worked fine for me a couple decades ago. That more than offset the fact that it has the best trigger of the three.
So clearly the GP100 deserved a chance and a little attention. First step, a new front sight. A Novak tritium front sight arrived today and was a really simple swap, the fit on both old and new sights was not especially tight and all it took was a plastic-tipped punch and a small hammer and five minutes... I put a little blue loctite on the new one despite the fact that the old one hadn't moved even under some pretty heavy magnum recoil. Just to be sure.
Big difference and well worth $54. The new sight is the same width (.125) and height (.265) as the old one, but the max height is at the tritium face, putting the dot a little higher on the sight. The old fiber optic is tallest at the end away from the focus point, closer to the muzzle, which may contribute to the reports of a fuzzy sight picture.
I have a set of Altamont's on the way, should be here in a few days. In theory those should be a better fit for my hands. Range report to follow.