doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Light gun game loads

The past few years I've been using B&P High Pheasant 1oz 6's on wild Pheasant in SD and E.MT and can find no fault in them, they are as good as anything I've used in the past. Shooting a 6# sxs is much nicer with the lighter loads.

British loads were designed for a different game than American walk up shooting. Lighter loads make sense for smaller game like grouse, woodcock and quail, and high volume incoming pheasant shooting, but not for going away pheasants.

I would wager that an active driven pheasant shooter in the UK kills more pheasants in a year than most American hunters do in a lifetime. But I am not that is relevant to deciding if loads designed for driven shooting are useful for walk-up shooting. Breeks may be handy in the moors but not so much in a New England thicket.

Much ado about nothing. Shoot enough so that you know what different loads are capable of doing out of your particular gun, then use the load that suits both you and the game the best. For me it is usually:

Doves
7/8 oz. in a 20
1 oz. in a 16
1 oz. in a 12

Ducks
1 1/4 oz. steel in a 12
1 3/8 Bismuth in a 12

Bobwhites
11/16 oz. in a .410
7/8 oz. in a 20

Sporting Clays
1 oz. to 1 1/8 oz. in a 12
1 oz. in a 16
7/8 oz. in a 20
1/2 oz. in a .410

Guns are individuals. They don't all shoot the same load the best just because they have similar dimensions. Patterning tells the truth.

SRH

As I understand it the "Standard" load for the British 2�" shell was 1 1/8oz. During WWI the load was legally restricted to 1 1/16oz. Following the war the slightly lighter load was so well liked that many shooters stayed with it & si it more or less became a Standard. The guns themselves though as Larry pointed out continued to be proofed for the 1 1/8oz load. The 2 3/4" chambered guns were proofed for 1�oz.
It is noted that W W Greener stated at least as early as 1910, probably even earlier than that, that the 12ga would handle 1�oz shot so well that unless a heavier load was desired there was no advantage of going up to a 10ga. Sinjce I shoot round pellets out of a round bore I have never been overly impressed with a "Square Load".

That also fits in that the trend for very light guns really started between the wars. Typically pre 1914 guns are a little heavier than 1920s guns. I'm not sure either how much the change from black powder to early smokeless (nitro) powders may have influenced the load chosen.

John;
Being an American born 1938 of course all I know on this subject is what I have gleaned from reading over the years. What I have gathered here is the more or less standard black powder load for the nominally 2�" gun was 3 Drams black with 1 1/8 oz shot. The early switch to smokeless was predominately with bulk smokeless which used the same volume of powder @ about half the actual weight. This gave a very slight reduction in recoil due to the lighter weight of the powder but not really enough to make a significant difference in the gun's weight. With the drop of the shot weight to 1 1/16oz & the increasing popularity of dense smokeless powders which again cut the weight of the powder approximately in half a significant reduction of gun weight could be accomplished without an increase in recoil. This was I highly suspect the reason for the continuing popularity o the lighter load. While it did prove to be adequate for its intended use, there is no evidence I am aware of that it was actually a "Better" load from an efficiency standpoint due to it being "Square".

I agree with all you say above, but would add that my understanding was that as the loads became 'over square' (i.e. longer than the diameter) - the risks of pellet deformation (this in the days before plastic wads) both from wall contact and crushing/cold welding due to pressure increased. Hence, 'long' loads were more likely to have fliers and show irregularities in pattern. Its obviously not an exact rule, but I can see the logic of having a rule of thumb - as they say! 'Square' seems like a good point to start, though I have no idea if say 1.2:1 would be just as good. I suspect by 1.5:1, the pattern might well be suffering.

John;
An old Alliant (Formerly Hercules) handloaders manual has a chart in it showing the length of shot olum for 1 oz of shot in gauges from 10ga down through the .410 bore. They did not state either the size of shot or actual alloy, either of which would affect exact results. I highly suspect it was done with ordinary lead chilled shot of a smaller size as ordinarily used in skeet/trap shooting. Per this chart 1 oz shot has a column length of .690" in the 12 ga bore of .729" so under square by .95:1. 1 1/8oz would thus have a length or .776" or 1.065:1 over square. 1 1/16oz is as close as one is going to get to square in the 12ga. 1�oz would have a length of .8625" or a ratio of 1.18:1. I have personally never witnessed any problem with using 1�oz of shot in a 12ga as regards its patterning ability.
However lets switch now to the 20ga. If you load that same column length of .8625 you will have 7/8 oz of shot.The 20ga has always as far as I am aware been noted for its hreat ability to handle 7/8os of shot. BUT the ratio of length to diameter in the smaller .615" bore of the 20ga is now 1.4:1.
My question now is if we load the 12ga with �oz of British #6's & the 20ga with 7/8 oz of british #6's the bottom layer of shot in both cases has exactly the same number of shot stacked on top of them. What difference does it make that one load has a ratio of 1.18:1 & the other is 1.4:1. In fact if you load each gauge with a shot load proportionate to the square of their diameters each one will have the same column length, but the ratio goes up as the gauge goes down. If one checks loads real close it will be found this common length of column is much closer to the loads traditionally loaded in the different gauges of shotguns rather than loading to a common ratio relative to their diameters.

I'm no expert in ballistics, but I have read a bit from those who do know the subject - however I'm getting well beyond my very limited knowledge here.
The thing that comes to mind is that as the bore decreases, the pressure rises. The shot will therefore be more prone to deformation and damage, fusion etc, Also, the longer the column, the greater the risk of deformation etc.
I entirely agree that there is no hard line beyond which patterns suddenly go wrong, but I do think that the small bores and long shot columns don't make for good patterns

My balanced loads are seen on my pattern board for the distances that I shoot. And for my 16 Ga. they are 3/4, 7/8, 1 and 1 1/8 oz. all stuffed into RMC hulls.