doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Long range clay pigeon record set - 130 yds

Digweed shoots a Perazzi almost exclusively so it should have 2 3/4" or maybe 3" chambers.

I have friends that have shot Clays with him in England and they say he is scary good at distances at which they can barely see the birds.

Maybe he and Kim Rhodee can make babies !

Lets do a little ciphering. Ciphering is fun. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the best qualified to take this problem on, but I'll start it and wait for Don or someone almost as smart to come along and bail me out.

Here goes...

Let us assume we have an exellent shotgun, one with almost mythical shooting properties. Instead of patterning at 40 yards, we are going to pattern at 120 yards.

For the sake of simplicity and best case scenario, we are going to assume conical pattern spread, and our superb gun will print 100% patterns in a 30 inch circle at 40 yards. I said it was a good gun.

At 120 yards, our perfect pattern has spread to 90 inches. Assume it's still 100%, and fully half of the shot charge charge is in the central 45 inch 'core'. What a gun!

Using English 5's at 220 per ounce, given the above wonderful performance, how often will we hit a clay target in that 45" central 'core' - where Mr. Digweed will always put it?

We'll take a Springing Teal target, face on at 14.5 square inches. The area of the central 45 inch pattern core is 2826 square inches. Dividing, we get 194 clay target areas in this core. Shooting an ounce and a quarter of English 5's would mean half of them work out to 138 pellets.

Thus, two thirds of the time given this best case scenario we can expect to put a hole in a target. One hole.

Somebody else can work retained energy and velocity, and likelyhood of multiple pellet hits to assure destruction of the target.

Remember, this is a mythical close shooting gun given conical pattern spread and a 100% pattern. Real world will be somewhat worse than this, perhaps much worse.

So, what I'm thinking is that Digweed is better than the equipment. It seems that he can put the gun where it needs to be, but the pattern is so sparse, his probability of hits is low.

I watched and listened to this or another clip of GD shooting the extreme long bird, he said he is "dropping the shot onto the bird".

However he does it, it's extraordinary.

Believe that's correct Chas.

The longest shot I have any extensive experience with is the old trap 'porch shoot'. We used to shoot from a point in line with the clubhouse porch benches, directly behind trap #4.

It approximates 40 yard trap. Distance to target peak, which is the only place they seem to break, would be 70 yards +/-.

Time of flight is more than 2/10's of a second, and the target moves many feet. It's a tough shot, but during our events I'd estimate the 27 yard men averaged half or a little better. I shot 9 for 10 once and won enough to keep me in shells and targets for the rest of the afternoon! Great memories of that place.

The trick was to note against the background the horizontal line where the targets peaked. Hold on that line, and when you see a flash of orange, guess the angle vector and shoot along the peak line where you think it's going to be.

Normal trap technique does not work.

Some guys used field loads of 6's, I had the most success with factory new Federal Champions in 7 1/2.

It's a game of chance at that point, but luck favors the better shooters.

OKEYDOKEY, Just finished the test Miller suggested. I have a 100 yd rifle range right behind the house, laser meaured. I moved 28 yds behind the bench, 2 more yards would have put me in the road ditch, where I couldnt see the target..So that what you'll have to live with. I put a rock on one of my "Kribs for Sheriff' Election signs, on the backstop, went back and let er fly. The first shot, holding where I could see the rock, broke it with a one pellet hit. The 2nd shot, covering it, broke it with 4 pellets striking it. The 3rd shot, same hold, broke it with a 2 pellet hit. Thus one can conclude, that a clay bird can be broken 100% of the time at 128 yards. Now before all you engineers and experts who wear their underwear one size too small start in with sample size, dispersions, cone shapes and such, I must tell you, I dont care. Gun was a Lefever E Grade 10 bore, Out of the box RST #5's and one of the best shots extant at the gun.
So when hOmeless jOe, Joe wood, and I are toting our 10's when the gang is here in December, we must not hesitate to shoot roosters at extreme range, being flushed by Chuck H's new english pointer...I sent pictures to couple of the guys to post for me..

Ya gotta love it, can't wait for all the closet engineers here to jump all over that while pulling on their underwear, they'll be like rats in a garbage dump...........only thing better would be to do it in the rain........... ............good job LD........

I've seen George do this stuff at a Game Fair and make no mistake he hits clays at extraordinary distances; the day I saw him was also stinking hot and very still FWIW. It isn't a springing teal type bird, more of an incoming high-ish trap shot. I suspect with the dropping clay and dropping shot the clay is in the pattern for quite a long time.

I never saw a surveyors tape though, so claims as to exact yardages don't stack up; as my old Black Country engineering mentor used to say, "It'll all pass if you don't test it".

As regards the very high pheasant discussion, I think Salopian knows many of the high drives round here and the artillery some folks employ. IMO the heights some birds are fired at are excessive and unrealistic; I base that premise on the number of shots fired to clean kills. It isn't great to see and I'm sure that colours his opinion as it does mine.

I'm the guy with the three retrievers 400 yards behind the line and we're not there because all the birds are dead round the pegs. Me and The Boys, we see it all.

Nuff said.

Eug

Amen.

SRH

As regards high pheasant shooting at extreme ranges, I still say it has NOTHING to do with exhibition clay target shooting.

You go George.

SRH