The guns did their part very well. The full-size Custom had the weight to soak up a lot of the bump of most 230-gr. loads. Fast pairs were fairly easy to execute. At the other end of the line, the little Ultra was harder to shoot with speed. It wanted to bounce off target and required a strong Weaver stance to control. Split times suffered accordingly. Not surprisingly, the compromise middle gun—the Master Carry Pro—was much easier to manage than the Ultra. Most of this function and familiarization shooting was done with a wide assortment of ammunition of different bullet weights and brands ranging from partial boxes to most of my .45 ACP leftovers from other projects.

That was a completely different project from the accuracy testing, because I fired all three pistols in the Ransom Rest, where recoil does not enter into the equation. Using three different commercial loads from three domestic ammunition makers, I worked my way through the American Rifleman protocol of five consecutive, five-shot groups. How about a bottom line first? The average group size for all three pistols was 2.15 inches, but the Ultra averaged 2.80 inches, the Pro was 2.02 inches and the Custom was 1.65 inches. That is excellent performance. I had one malfunction, a failure to chamber, but traced it to an aftermarket magazine of dubious pedigree that somehow got mixed into the cycle. Using Kimber’s magazines produced flawless functioning. After the shoot, I fired a few more rounds with Wilson, Colt and McCormick magazines and had no malfunctions.

In the Master Carry family, Kimber offers a trio of properly performing defensive pistols that let the buyer choose a size and weight option to suit his need. If he has more than one need, Kimber will be delighted to sell him more than just one of the Master Carry series, like the Custom and the Ultra. Or maybe you could settle for the gun in the middle, the Pro. That is an all-around gun that is hard to beat.