doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Shot string myths.

I hear a few people claim a long shot strings may help in hunting. Long shot strings are one of the most over rated things to me. Steel loads, start out at 1450fps at the muzzle, then slow to 1200 fps at 40 yards. A target that travels 40mph, which is 58.66fps, they cross paths. If the shot string is ten feet long, how far does the target travel, if at right angle to the shot string, while the entire shot string blast past it? About 5.866" maximum, at best. I did the math, mostly in my head, but math is still math. One train is going 1200 fps (818mph) and one is going at 58.66fps (40mph) so how far does the slower train move, while the faster one moves ten feet across the slower one, in front of it? Classic math problem we all hated back in school.

1200fps load is equal to how many MPH?

1200fps X 60 Seconds X 60 Minutes = 4,320,000feet/5,280 feet per mile = 818MPH


A target traveling at 40MPH travels = how many feet per second?

40 X 5280 feet = 211,200 feet in a hour

211,200/60 minutes in an hour = 3,520 Feet Per Minute,
3,520 FPM / 60 Seconds = 58.66 FPS

So if our shot stream is traveling 1450FPS at the muzzle it is going about 1200 at 40 yards. Our shot string is about 10-12' long. How long does that take 1200fps shot to travel 10'? First pellet to last pellet, past the bird.

10 foot string
______________ = .008333 seconds to travel 10 feet.
1200 FPS

So our shot string travels past the target in .008333 seconds.

How far does the target move in .00833 seconds?

58.66 FPS X .00833 seconds = .48883 feet

.48883 feet = 5.866 inches.

As the shot slows down, the distance the target travels increases in relation to the shot string. So 900fps gives you 7.82". But much slower than that I doubt you have enough energy to kill cleanly. So while the string effect might increase, the return becomes irrelevant. Who cares how far a target travels, if the pellets lack energy to break it or kill a bird?

And ten feet, for the shot string, might be twice the real lengthen, depending on distance and starting muzzle velocity, so the target moves even less than 5.86". A five foot string gives you a 2.933" distance traveled. Or if the shot is less than 1200 FPS at target distance and you might get an extra inch or two of target travel. Big deal. And the closer to parallel the shot and target are, the less the target moves across the string, as the shot flies past. So less than 5.866", again all the way down to zero if they are parallel. Parallel lines never cross.

So when I hear people talk about long shot strings killing more birds I have to say bunk. If that was the case, shell makers would not have spent a lot of money making strings short and the patterns dense as possible. If you are counting on the edge of your pattern to do all the killing work, it is a very iffy thing. We try to use the center of the pattern, not the edge or trailing end. And a center hit, has the densest pattern, which means plus or minus a couple inches is meaningless.

And shot strings are not perfect cylinders, with shot evenly distributed from front to back. So the chance of hitting a target is not equal along the entire string. If 90% of the shot goes by in the first 20% of the string the sparse pellets near the rear may not be enough to give you a statistical chance for a hit. So again that 5.866" becomes less.

Give me a short shot string, with as near a pancake pattern as you can. I'll do the rest, by figuring out the right lead, not how to use some mythical string to backdoor a hit.

Ky Jon, it seems your argument is that the shot string for all practical purposes IS a pancake.

You are pretty generous with your 40 mph birds. Not many are, if shot from a flush or in a landing approach. I would wager grouse and bobs are rarely half that at the distances we shoot them. I think pheasants would be lucky to get to 30 before they are either out of range or dead. But slower bird speeds only serve to make the shot string functionally more pancake like.

Shot string might help really good skeet shooters if they happen to lead a target too far. Most of the rest of us are far more likely to underlead rather than overlead, where doesn't help at all. And the really good skeet shooters probably don't need the help.

Might also help guys pass shooting waterfowl when they don't lead the first duck or goose far enough and end up killing one further back. But if they're shooting steel, that's less likely to happen than back when lead was legal for waterfowl. Because steel shot doesn't deform like lead, it doesn't string as much.

Jon's math is for a 90 degree crosser, I think, and any lesser angle all the way back to straightaway makes the time of flight for the string to pass the bird even more meaningless.

I've had Bill McGuire tell me to "Miss in front, if you miss. Use that shotstring." But, like Jon, I did the math many years ago and realized the same thing. It's all a matter of mere inches. The mantra to "miss in front" is really to help a shooter learn to see what extreme amounts of forward allowance look like. I find that when new sporting clays shooters miss a fast crosser (assuming they're on line with the target)they miss behind, almost always. As some shooters learn to kill fast, long crossers they reach a point to where they miss in front much more often than behind. Several of my shooting buddies have noticed this, too.

It also happens in the field. We start the hunting season on doves. Doves can easily fly over 60 mph if there's a wind. Shoot doves a few times, then go on a crow shoot and we'll be missing in front until we remind ourselves how much slower they are flying.

SRH

Few ducks can go 40 mph without a tailwind. But many clay targets can do so. I picked 40 as the high end. If a bird goes slower the distance traveled by it while the shot stream blast by it decreases even more. An people forget these ultra fast hunting loads of 1400 fps are cranked up because steel slows down quickly. So 1450 may be 1200 fps or less when the shot reaches the bird.

Fact is fast shot does not stay fast for long. The target travels very little distance in the time from when the first pellet to last pellet blast by it. I find larger shot is more effective at a long distance than ultra fast smaller shot. I doubt a long shot string kills more birds than a stray pellet does.

I once shot a round with the late Wayne Mayes who was a truly gifted shooter. As a demonstration he started shouting high station 4 birds. First by breaking the very front of the bird off and proceeded to hit each successive bird slightly further back until by the last shot he dropped a tiny sliver off the rear of the bird. It was impressive and taught me he was shooting several levels higher than the rest of us. He proved that by later shooting his 100-th .410 100 straight in regerstered skeet. I�ve got less than a dozen in competition. Many of us never get one or two. Luck and lumps are hard to swallow sometimes.

I think Burrard pretty well summed up, shot stringing many years ago.
Unless one is shooting over 40 yds t birds traveling at least 0 MPH 7 at right angles to the line if sight, "FORGET" shot stringing exists. This makes it of relevance only to long-range pass shooters.

If you look at the shot string like an MRI you have The pattern density at each layer or slice. The longer the shot string the thinner the pattern at each slice, or a stack of pancakes. If you have the sting over 10 pancakes instead of 1 if you divided the number of pellets by 10 each would have 1/10 the pellets of 1. Of course the pattern distribution is not equal between each pancake or MRI slice, each of those patterns will be less effective than 1. Brister used the trailer targets to show this by showing the length of the shot string.

What about a dymanic and not a static analysis

Bird speed is interesting. Ruffed grouse and quail can go from zero to top end pretty quickly. I expect a pheasant might have a faster top end, but they don't accelerate as quickly.

I was driving along a highway in Iowa one day, probably doing about 60, when I spotted a hen pheasant flying parallel to the road. I slowed down a bit to keep pace with her and watched the speedometer. She was doing a bit over 50 mph. Coasting, not flapping her wings.

Most ducks fly around 50 MPH, no tailwind required.