doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Forcing cones in old doubles

And I find boths sides interesting,

Well, we certainly agree that the 28 and the 20 are more alike than the 28 and the .410. You don't really need any math to get there. Well, maybe a little . . . enough to tell that the 20 and the 28 are closer in bore diameter than are the 28 and the .410.

But, assuming all you say is true, this still seems at least somewhat mysterious to me: not only does the 28 have a smaller bore, meaning that the shot is more likely to deform (assuming equal protection furnished by wads and equal hardness); but the 20, in its standard skeet load, has 1/6 more pellets (7/8 oz vs 3/4 oz) than does the 28. Yet the skeet averages quoted by Brister are virtually identical. About 1% difference. Seems to me the 20 ought to show more of an advantage than that.

Larry;
Put your thinking cap back on for a bit. Fact is, at skeet ranges the 28 is capable of running near perfect scores, with misses being the fault of the shooter more so than the gun. "IF" one is breaking 98-99 out of 100 with the 28, then maximum improvement which would be possible would be 2% even if a 10ga with 2oz of shot was used.

Sort of like if I take a .22LR to the squirrell woods & kill a TN limit of 6 with 6 shots, I would not expect to have a higher kill/shot ratio if I carried a .32-20, But, on the other hand, If I were shooting Coyote??

Take the 28 & the 20 to a handicap trap range. Start at the 16yd line & keep baking up after firing a statistically reliable numer at each point. If the 28 seems to still retain the same effectivness, First pat your self on the back, You're a great shot. But be well aware it will have done so because of the afore mentioned central density of the pattern either from a higher percentage overall pattern or from an increased percentage of the central core thickening, Either which is accomplished at the expense of a reduced effective kill circle, there simply is "No Free Lunch".

I don't have Brister's book in front of me but recall that the 20 ga skeet scores he looked at were closer to the 28 ga scores than the 12 ga. scores, suggesting that, although a 20 ga. falls exactly between a 12 and a 28 gauge-wise, it "underperformed" a bit relative to the other two gauges. Maybe he was not using a perfect metric, but those scores would indicate there is not a linear relationship between gauge and effectiveness at the skeet range.

Of course we don't know what loads were being shot for all of those scores . . . .

Thanks, Miller . . . having run a few straights myself at skeet with the 28ga, I'm quite well aware that it can be done. (And having seen better gun hands than me shoot skeet with a .410, I'm convinced I could not do it with one of those.) But you're not looking at Brister's reference. He was not talking about the best skeet shooters in the world. Rather, he was talking about B class, which is pretty good, but certainly not great. These are guys who average 93-94% with a 12ga, so they're not likely to average 98-99% with a 28. (And remember, this is a pretty large data base we're talking about here--not just one guy on one day.) The same guys averaged 91% with a 20ga, and 90% with a 28ga. That means they're dropping 1 target out of 100 when they should have, to use your words, "a reduced effective kill circle"--because they're throwing a lighter shot charge. So apparently that effective kill circle has not been reduced by much--at that range. It likely would be, if those targets were out beyond 30 yards. But at skeet range, the gun gives up essentially nothing to the 20ga--which is why it's such a good choice for game usually shot at close range--like grouse and woodcock, and quail. Not a good choice, for sure, for birds shot at longer range and/or requiring shot sizes larger than about 7 1/2 because, as you said, there's no free lunch.

Larry;
You make some very good points there. I think the answer here is, that even those B class shooters which are averaging 90-91% are still quite good shots, though not up to the absolute top yet. However it would also seem that most of the misses were not due to a properly centered pattern failing to break the target, but were either missed or fringed. The fact that from the 3/4oz 28 all the way up through the 1 1/8oz 12ga only a 3-4% difference shows does indeed reflect there is not that much difference in pattern spread or distribution between them. As the shot load gets heavier it will pick up a target or two in the fringe that the lighter charge failed to break, & some part of those unbroken may well have just been totally beyond even the fringes. As the range increases & becomes more difficult you would see the lighter charges dropping in their % of breaks at a faster rate than the heavier charges, & it would not really matter whether that 3/4oz load were fired through the 28 or a 20, effect would be based more on the wt of shot than size of the hole.

you almost need an umbrella for this discussion...

Miller, it'd be interesting to compare 3/4 oz 20ga vs 28ga patterns. Theoretically, there'd be some advantage to the 20 due to reduced pellet deformation. Wonder how much??

Larry;
That would be an interesting experiment. My suspicians are that if ordinary chilled shot were loaded over card & filler wadding the 20 would show a decided advantage due to lesser deformation of shot. With premoium shot & a good qualirt shot cup I think this difference would be mosyly eliminated. What I would definitely like to see done when these tests were run would be for a half size circle (15") drawn concentric with the outer 30" one. Counting the hits in the inner circle & multiplying by 3 then dividing by the hits in the outer ring gives the ratio of central core thickening for the half dia ring.