Meet "Little Bill*"

(*That moniker is a tip of the hat to legendary gunsmith, gun designer, gun builder Bill Laughridge, the President of Cylinder & Slide, Inc., who is alleged to have helped Colt with the design of the Colt Defender.)

Recently, after completing a thorough range-session with a different pistol, I put a quick six rounds of Federal 230-grain Hydra-Shok through this lightweight, 45 ACP, 3'' barreled early vintage Colt Defender.  This was simply a preliminary function test; it is a used pistol (serial# DR03618; possibly 1998 vintage) but it looked to be unfired or nearly so when I bought it a few months ago.  The first round that I fired hit red-center but the muzzle-blast shifted my subconscious into the dark world of bad habits and I pushed the next two rounds low.  I had to settle myself in and focus on sight, breathing, and trigger in order to bring the final three rounds into the zone of "good enough."

Six rounds do not a reliable pistol make, but I did not bring it along to the range that day for a full shakedown; mostly I just wanted to see how the extractor on this pistol performed in realtime (poorly tuned extractors, or those made from poor material or with substandard production quality control, cause some of the common reliability issues with 1911 pistols of all sizes). So far, so good.  Time will tell if this pistol is going to work out for me.

EDITED TO ADD:  There are different brands of these 3'' 1911 pattern pistols.  CLICK HERE to read a good article regarding the spotty reliability of these little pistols.