Since I happened to be in the vicinity of our gun club today, thought I'd collect a bit of unbroken target evidence to analyze. With the deep, fluffy snow we have, unlikely that contact with the ground will result in many breaks. So if a target appeared unhit in the air, it likely landed whole in the snow.
Managed to collect a total of 68 targets. Because of where the snow was piled, many of them were from the adjacent 5 stand range rather than from the skeet range. But an unbroken target is an unbroken target, and the shots are not all that much longer than skeet.
Results: 57 targets without holes or significant chips from a hit. (Falling in the snow, not much other than a stray pellet could cause a chip.) 11 unbroken but with holes or chips that appear to have been from pellet strikes. So not very unusual for a light hit to leave a target in one piece.
