doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Hypothetical question re spreader loads

I recall Roger Barlow doing an article on the cube & disc shot some years back, I think was in an old Gun digest. I have never shot either of these myself.

Spreaders are most often considered impracticable beyond around 25 yds. I tried to never shoot real close to any dog on a hunt even without spreaders. It would take an extremely variant pellet to hit a dog if you are using good shooting practice in my opinion.

I "Almost" shot a good beagle once on a rabbit hunt, but that's not really connected to this thread. Just a case of a dog being where I didn't know she was & as I pulled down on the rabbit she suddenly sprang out of some cover right in front of it. The rabbit was running toward me just outside the cover & I had already sent the impulse to pull the trigger. I wasn't able to stop my pull but did manage to rear back & throw the shot high, was shooting a 12 gauge cylinder bore muzzle loader.

Miller, I, too, wonder if the stray pellet theory came from someone who shot a low bird too close to a dog and wanted to assign blame somewhere else. Just last month a friend's grandson-in-law's Lab was filled up with #8 bird shot when a customer on the preserve on which he guided shot a low, slow quail, a late flusher, after the lab was sent in to retrieve. The dog survived bowel surgery and x-rays showed over 100 shot in a hind quarter. Gil

That customer should be banned from that preserve, and be billed for the veterinary services, IMO. People make mistakes, but we should have to pay for them.

SRH

I have some tight choked doubles that otherwise make good bird guns. I use Polywad spreaders in them over dogs. The question here had come up many years ago and I "patterned" a few shells to see for myself. I used TV boxes for targets.

I found no evidence of extreme flyers. Of course the flyers may have been off the box, I guess. I still use spreaders...Geo

Thanks, Geo. I think I'm going to shoot the plate with some SpredRs, from my 16 ga. AE, this afternoon if the rain quits, or asap.

SRH

I use RST spreader loads for almost all of my Mearns quail hunting and have done so for the last 7 or 8 years. All of this hunting has been done with my Pointers.
Most of these birds are shot under 20 yards and using a light spreader load kills effectively and I believe leaves a bird that is still able to be eaten, even when shot with some of my vintage SXS choked pretty tight.
Spreader loads don�t throw some crazy uncontrolled load, they simple help to open up the pattern. I know that this is not a scientific test but my experience from using spreaders in the field.
It�s my opinion anyone saying their dog was hit with a stray pellet is using that excuse for shooting a dog.
I never approach my dogs with a low gun where I must bring the gun up over them to shoot a rising bird. I never shoot a bird on the ground. If my dog is on point and the birds flush before I am able to get close to my dog, I don�t shoot.
I�m sure most guys hunting birds with their dogs follow these same rules.
I do know of several cases where accidents happened or carelessness was involved and dogs were hurt as well as some killed.

I would think that fiber wad shells with no shotcup would actually cause more errant flyers than spreader loads with plastic shotcups just from the shot scrubbing on the barrel walls.

I think that GSL has found 99% of all stray pellet source. Stupid actions by excited people. The number of near disasters I�ve seen hunting and boating are are almost all due to deliberate bad decisions. Shoot too low, too near, too late and boating were mostly alcohol related with a few just plain stupid things thrown in. And first thing people do is try to cover up or pretend it was not them.

I have no experience with spreaders, are they designed to open up a pattern more than a gun with no choke at all?

I.e. will a Cyl. choked gun shoot a more open pattern with spreaders than with a standard load?

Anyone ever been hit by a stray pellet on the skeet field?
Ricochets happen.

I think that patterning the spreader loads at a steadily increasing set of distances is a great idea.

One of my labs had pellets in her back.
I attributed them to having been somewhere under or at least near enough to a flushing pheasant to have been raked or ricocheted.

So Without exactingly identifying the how, I am sure that shooting over a flushing dog can put pellets in them. I suppose that if a spreader was working as designed, there would be a choke construction or two increase in pattern width at distance, So some net increase in the chance of a nearby dog getting fringed. Or hit by a ricochet.

I don�t think that is evidence of a �golden bb� when it works for you, or of a �black pearl� when it works against you.
Plenty of things can alter or re direct the trajectory of a deformed pellet, an arrow, or a rocket ship for that matter.

Re-reading Stan�s question more carefully, I know of no one ever shooting spreaders into a huge cardboard or steel screen for the purpose of looking for extreme flyers.