I have had a CZ Bobwhite 20 ga. for a while now and have loved it for hunting and occasional clays. I have noticed twice when shooting clays (admittedly with very cheap Federal Target Loads) that it was very difficult to break open. I literally had to break it open over my knee. I looked at all the empty shells and noticed the firing pins were dragging on the primer - a drag mark was very pronounced on each primer. The primers had also all flattened out against the face of the receiver. Didn't matter whether I fired once, twice, right or left barrel. Temperature was in the high 20's.
Do the firing pins not retract until the gun is broken open?
When I got back home I noticed that the cocking-arm screw on the left side of the receiver had worked loose and had to be tightened up. When I thought about it, this had happened once before but I don't recall if it coincided with the first occurrence with stiff breaking.
Went out again (temperatures in the 30s) with a variety of higher quality shells (Remington), both game and target and the cheap Federals only gave minor resistance. When firing the Remington shells it was noticeably easier to open. However, there were still drag marks on all of the primers from the firing pins - both barrels.
Do you have any insight as to what could be going on with the gun I love?
Thanks for any help,
David
