doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com The Square Load

I have read most of the great shotgun ballistic authors and have their books on my shelves. They include Greener, Burrard, Oberfell & Thompson, Brister, Zutz, Lowry, Jones, and many more.

I can find fault if I look hard enough with most if not all of them in some small way whether it be a conclusion, a process, or statement within the book.

A.C. Jones writes well and more importantly supports what he writes with understandable experimentation. He probably has made more than one statement that is imperfect. That said, his method of experimentation to include sampling size as well as use of valid software computations lend me to think he is more right than wrong. Simply put as educated an amatuer I maybe, he knows more than me and I hazard to guest in this narrow field more than most of us on this board.

He does address Brister's method of shot string analysis briefly in his book. Not to attack Brister but to note that method of sampling (pulling a trailer behind speeding truck) did not account for the effects air movement and draft(my words not his as I don't have the book in my hands at the moment) caused by the truck itself.

Stan, his book dealt with more than just shot string analysis.

I believe it is a work of some benefit, in particular in debunking some commonly held myths and assumptions.

His experiments showed many things assumed or populaized as issues or solutions yielded negligible differences (effects of overbore, no one gauge is inherently superior to another, negligible difference in performance between fiber and plastic wads, and much more) He also confirms much of what Burrard and others have already written. He is dry and his book is chart heavy, but it is well worth slugging through.

I don't believe his purpose was to stir controversy, but to answer basic questions. My only regret in reading his book is that his bibliography included a book I could not find in English and my French is not up to the task of understanding technical literature in detail. Menus and tourist guides no problem, even gun catalogs, but not technical works.

As others in this thread have noted, at the end of the day and the end of the science it comes back to simply putting the pattern on the bird.

That was kind of my take also, Stan.

I may have my local library find Jones for me, and make use of the $60/yr I'm now paying in library tax which mostly goes to fund the two dozen or so computer stations.

I'm not buying another book about 2D shotgun patterns. It's been done. O&T, Zutz, Brister etc.

Zutz was a fan of the Berlin-Wansee method which purported to measure 'central thickening', but that thing has the center divided into quadrants which would seem to return truly useless information even if the results were repeatable.

Don Amos has read Jones and comments that the major finding is that patterns follow Rayleigh distribution, and small samples are pointless.

I still think 2D pattern analysis of a 3D system is useless.

The usefulness of 2D patterning, for me, comes down to shooting a grease plate for POI. I am much more concerned with where each barrel puts that pattern than I am about the minutia of that individual pattern. Are the barrels regulated, and are they shooting where I'm looking is the main use of patterning for me.

That is how we get to the point to where we can put that hot core on the bird. It has to be shooting where we're looking, or all else is for naught.

Good discussion, SRH

The simple, unadorned truth

My inference, resulting from picking up targets with one hole (or more), is that we have proof in our hands that at least some targets will not be broken by a single pellet. Which means that we don't know, out of say 100 single pellet hits, how many will break and how many won't. I think Stan and I are on the same sheet of music here.

I have not read Mr Jones' work on this. However from what I am reading here I do not really see a discrepancy. I have not gathered he said "All" targets hit by a single pellet would be broken. Obviously as targets are found unbroken with one or more holes all are not broken. Also obviously a perfect score was not registered on that round.
As I understand he stated that having looked at a large number of patterns & considering the number of perfect scores posted some number of targets "Must" have been broken by a single pellet. Some targets remaining unbroken by a single pellet "Does Not" prove that none were. As yet I have seen no evidence that his synopsis is in fact in error.

"As I understand he stated that having looked at a large number of patterns & considering the number of perfect scores posted some number of targets "Must" have been broken by a single pellet."

Which only seems to indicate he's fulla crap.

My target guns for either trap or skeet print 70% or better at the appropriate distance, either 40 yards or 21 yards as the case may be.

I've shot 100's at both games.

I can assure you, without a doubt, that during those events I got no 'one pellet breaks' with a correctly pointed target.

None. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

You don't chip and chunk your way to a 100. You center targets on the way to 100. If you are hitting your stride and you miss or chip, you know why.

I'm confident in stating that with modern loads and guns a 100% score is a statistical certainty. The 'chance' element was eliminated by the plastic shot wrapper and hard shot.

I'm not saying there are no one pellets breaks. We've all had more than we admit. It's just that a prefect score is not dependent on it. If it were, the 'random distribution' would be found at the top of the leader board. Shockingly, it isn't.

Miller, as I recall his quote, it's more than just "some number". He indicated that single pellet breaks have to be quite frequent. And since we know that single pellet non-breaks are quite frequent, to me that seems to toss his theory into a cocked hat.

And, as pointed out above, it's not necessarily true--especially in gauges larger than the .410--that there will be ANY single pellet breaks involved in a 100 straight, with a good shot who's really on his game. I got the idea that Dr. Jones wasn't fully aware of how many unbroken targets result from single pellet strikes. And I'm not sure computer analysis will get you there. Picking up holed but unbroken targets on a range will.

Computers can't analyze anything.

They are only a tool for the scientist, and all they do is run whatever program the investigator has written containing his assumptions and theories.

They process the data into tables and graphs, and it's left to the experimenter to interpret the fit, if any, to reality.

A scientist named Bob in his lab:

"Here's my experimental results. It looks to me like the system under investigation obeys these laws (sound of equation entry on computer keyboard)." Enter the RUN command. Presto, a chart that displays all possible outcomes and the probability of each.

"Hum. That does not at all look like the preconceived notions I had when I started this. If I report these results, the scientific community will laugh at me, and my grant funding will dry up. I can't have that. Lets' see here... if I fiddle with the equations like so... RUN... perfect! A discovery! I'll call it 'The Bob Effect' and bask in the notoriety that is rightfully mine."

The thing about probability is that given enough trials, every 'possible' outcome must occur, eventually. Thus, 'possible' has taken on the meaning of 'will'. We are told that a living organism 'will' assemble itself from a random vat of chemicals given enough time, or that one day all the pellets from one shot charge will follow each other into the same hole.

If you wait by the river long enough, the body of your enemy will float by.