doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Hard or soft shot kill the best??

I do not know if it is still true, but a bit of trivia from a decade ago when I first started as an independent dealer of B&P from Kaltron.

Both Kent and Fiocchi loaded shot bought from B&P in Italy. Or at least so I was told by John Palazzo, Kaltron's National Sales Rep.

B&P's shot is truly nickel plate shot.

I'd agree here with Larry. Assuming the gun is ok with steel though, it drops waterfowl just fine for me at reasonable distances. I haven't found much help from HS type loads unless it's for pass shooting bigger birds. I do notice a few more swimmers with steel and if the head is up I try to finish it off quick.

With lead, I tend to use lighter loads at standard to light target velocities. On the pattern board or in the field, I can't see any difference with premium plated shot over good high antimony unplated shot.

Looks like everyone overwhelmingly favors hard shot in terms of killing efficiency as compared to soft. I suspected this would be the case. OK, I'm convinced.

In My 65+ years of waterfowl and large bird hunting I have found that shot size and powder charge was most important. At close range it makes little difference However at extreme range you need heavy and hard shoot . JMO Pilgrim

As I, and others, mentioned today's plated shot is not nearly as thick a coating as the old days. I am not saying true plated shot is unavailable, just that most of it that is called plated is not a bit harder than unplated, because the copper wash is so thin.

That said, does anybody know how good the quality is, of the coppered shot, in RST's 3 1/2 - 1 1/4 pigeon loads? They are put up in blue paper cases, and are fast becoming the choice of many top live pigeon shooters. There was a preponderance of those empties lying around at the last flyer shoot I attended, about a month ago. Rick Mein was shooting them, as were several other top competitors.

SRH

Stan: Borrow a few and do the pliers test comparing them to a very cheap low cost load. My guess is they are HARD. The copper/nickel coating is not a hardner on the shot no matter how thick. It is a solid lubricant like graphite except it is plated on the surface not just smeared on.

Remington and Winchester used to import nickel plated shot from Italy, where BP also got theirs, and load it for the US Olympic teams. Don't know if they still do that or not.

For those of you who don't know, Dr. A. C. Jones covered the hard vs soft shot issue in his learn'ed work, "Sporting Shotgun Performance," chapter 17. Soft shot through a full choke will produce near a 20" pattern diameter at about 28 yards and hard will produce the near identical pattern at about 32 yards.

Now, for the fly in the ointment. Do you want a more open choke or a tighter choke? This is the question because the patterns are statistically the same at a few yards difference in range. So, you can have the same pattern with soft as with hard by adding a few points more choke. Or, you can open your choke a few points by shooting soft shot. Shotgun patterns are Rayleigh distributed - so far, nuttin' has changed that.

So, howzibout a few more of you buckos belly up to the pattern plate, download Insights, and give us some statistically backed data - - - like Stan is doing for the .410 vs 12 bore effective pattern diameter question.

"ARRrrr, matey, there are monsters out there!!"

DDA

That's why in those high and far off days I used a double gun, like wot most of us have did.

Improved cylinder for the ones over the deeks at 25-30 yards and full for anything more further outer.

I did once step out the distance from my hide to the fall (out of a tree, shot sitting) of a wood pigeon ... 57 paces. Dead as a stone, never opened it's wings. Eley Nickel trap, number 7 Brit, full choke.

Eug

Agree. And it's a big fly. I don't even know how we, as individuals, can control this variable to answer the question. Insofar as shot sizes #6 and up are concerned, I think there is no difference in killing effectiveness whatsoever between hard, soft, plated, eieio Pb shot on upland birds.

Deformation reducing penetration seems more plausible with the smaller shot sizes......especially when we push them to maximum distances/bird sizes. But pattern density is the elephant in this room.

Sam