doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Pattern density between gauges

Just a point of thought that is contrary to the prevalent low velocity loads popular on this site, but the discussion about how long the shot string is, terminal velocity, and crossing target speed, seems to make a case for higher terminal velocities.

W/o opening too large a can o' worms, there is a lot of useful information here:

http://www.bunkershooting.com/ReloadingForBunker.html

I'd suggest one review the whole site, lots of good information there, arrived at through no small expense. Do enough screwing around [testing] at the grease plate/pattern board & shooting bunker & powder pigeon & you can come to similar conclusions.

Also, Lyman in one of their maunals offers some really good downrange ballistic data on lead pellets, the gist of which says that by 40 yards most target sized shot is travelng at similar velocities irrespective of muzzle velocity & if you want to deliver more energy for game or target purposes, use a larger size shot.

Was Burrards gun barrel stationary ?

Chuck, I think there's something in that post I'm not getting. Lower velocity does not necessarily mean longer string. In fact, if you add too much velocity, it can actually result in longer string caused by a higher percentage of damaged pellets. Certainly, on long crossing targets, lower velocity can require more forward allowance. But that doesn't have anything to do with string.

No; He had a long plate mounted with an aiming point marked & swung on it as an assistant drove it by at a measured distance & a fixed speed. He could not of course with this method get a fixed pattern & a moving one with the same shot, but did do extensive patterns on a fixed plate for comparsion to the moving ones, with same gun & load of course. I don't recall exact figures now, but his testing in comparsion also to other testing which has been done over the years showed that about 75% of the total shot was in about the front 40-50 % of the sring, with the badly deformed shot making up an extended tail. Consequently it does not follow that if a given load advertizes a 30% reduction in shot string, that this converts to 30% more pellet strikes on the target. Burrards testing was all done with shells using un-buffered, un-plated shot with card & felt wadding. He still found shot stringing to be of little concern within the 40/40 parameters, which accounts for the vast majority of shotgunning. It does of course make for Extremely Good Advertizing Hype.