I have read some weird stuff in this thread. Batha on Cutts patterns is way off the mark. Short shot strings or long shot strings, it doesn't make a bit of difference on a skeet field, the shot all gets there while the target travels about an inch and a half. The crazy statement about painted shot not reaching the pattern board if it is in the back of the stack?? What about a 100% pattern, like on a 32" circle at 38 yards from a great barrel, a not uncommon pattern in today's world. It's all on the pattern sheet, he just doesn't know which is which. I think the paint dried and he can't tell the difference between the painted and unpainted shot. The best example of a bad post is the fellow who won't read Brister because he (Brister) likes Winchester ammo. Brister's research is there to draw your own conclusions in Shotgunning, the Art and the Science. You don't have to believe the conclusions, but don't throw the book away. This shot string business can mostly be figured out by simple arithmetic using velocity and elapsed time figures. An example would be that nothing that could possibly happen to a shot string could possibly have any effect on an 18 yard shot at 45 degrees, like a high six skeet bird. The shot all gets there while the target moves about an inch, even if the shot string is 40 feet long, which it isn't. Yet here we are, eighty years after the advent of skeet, still talking about it. Give me a break.
