doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Please tell me about this pattern

Iver Johnson Supertrap
Right Barrel
14 yards
Remington Gun Club No. 8
11 x 17 paper

(holes off paper 99% not from this shell)

Why don't you tell us about how it was fired - off the bench like a rifle or as you would normally shoot a trap gun? Second, why only 14 yards? You can't get that close to a trap bird unless you are forward of the trap house. What it does at 30-40yds is more important.

The pattern looks centered, maybe ever so slightly low, but very slight. The load looks as though it throws the pellets right and low. For a Trapgun I would want more pellets above the center mark so the comb would need raised a bit. That is of course if your hold was solid with the bead right on the bullseye? Your 14 yard shooting is for POI I assume? To check choke shoot at 10 yards and for better info on hitting birds,30.

If you miss it's not the guns fault.

Bushmaster, I think you should shoot at least 10 patterns to get an idea of what the average pattern would be like.

Pete

Bushmaster, if you want it for trap/pigeon I would try it at 30-33 yards standing on the shoulder, with a 1.25 oz. charge, expecting 70/30 above/below the bullseye (repeat six times). Now if you want to check POI, to see whether the barrels are regulated, the answer is sitting in a bench at 20 yards aiming at the bullseye (repeat three times). If you want to know more about how this shotgun fits you, I would try shouldering and firing at 16 yards, every inch away from the bullseye means 1/16 inch change in the gun´s stock (repeat three times at least, one on top of the other, getting a dark cloud). If you want what choke you got, then at 40 yards counting the pellets inside a 30" circle that you place in the center of the shot swarm, for each barrel at least ten times cleaning the board very time, as prescribed by sxsman1.

Thirteen yards is the standard distance for determining POI. Fourteen will do. The trick is to maintain the same bead/rib sight picture you would use in normal shooting.

What clouds the issue is how much daylight you put between the front sight and the bird. Or maybe you put the bead on the target? When you talk around, it is difficult to know what sight picture the other guy was using, what his reference point is.

Just a causal observation, but I would offer that most field guns will print about 3" high at this distance. Does that sound right to the rest of you?

As to the pattern, you really need to move it back to the standard 40 yds. It's just the conventional yardstick for patterning.

Individual patterns vary all over the place, and if you shoot a small number you may not be able to tell they even came from the same gun. Shooting a single pattern can be pretty discouraging and misleading if you get an abnormal pattern.

A few years ago I wrote an article about patterning for the fourten.or.uk website, here is a direct link to the article.
http://www.fourten.org.uk/st_patterning.html
I hope you find this information helpful.
Steve