doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com On plated shot ...

Rather than clutter the thread on flyer shooting w/this topic though it is correctly mentioned there I thot I'd start another.

Aside from improved patterns when the shot is hard enough, nickel plated shot's real advantage on birds is that it is known to not 'draw feathers' and so there is a better chance of the pellet reaching the vitals, particularly on a 'driver', a low flying going away bird. The older Remington International target loads of 36 grams of nickel plated #8's accounted for a lot of birds back in the 60's & early 70's. It was great ammuntion.

Federal Premium 36 gram 3&3/4 DE loads [popular w/many shooters now] utilize a very hard copper plated shot. I don't have any personal experience using that ammunition. On copper plating drawing feathers, I've heard it discussed both ways & I've personally seen instances where it has drawn feathers w/'Hawk' brand copper plated shot used on feral pigeons. Not all plated shot is hard. As a matter of fact, that Hawk brand is quite soft.

Federal's older paper hulled 3&1/4 DE X 1&1/4oz. 'Flyer loads' utilized their now discontinued two-piece 'Pushin' Cushion' 12C-1 type wads and hard lead unplated pellets and was the choice of many a champion while it remained available. It was also very effective for pass shooting dove or feral pigeons at longer ranges. Would it draw feathers? Absolutely.

Today, we have Cheddite loading helice specific ammunition [their 'Mach 3'] with hard nickel plated #8.5 28 gram loads with the thought being that 28 grams of that shot has the exact same number of pellets as the older 36 gram #7.5 shot flyer loads. When helice first bacame popular & before the rule change to 28 gram max., we were using the Remington 'Sure Shot' ammo in 32 gram loads because it had relatively soft shot and was more effective on the Mexican targets that took 'more killing' at the time than the Italian ones. Those old tough targets made from less than ideal plastics are now history as well and striking regulation international helice targets with hard shot works just fine, when the bird is pointed correctly. hahaha.

So, what are the other opinions or experiences out there on the subject of plated shot? Its as good a subject as as any to toss about as Feb. approaches, is it not?

I believe plated shot kills better. I'm not big on 8s for Pigeons, but I know some very good shots who do like it.

What is called, and advertised as, plated shot today is almost never really plated shot, but has a micro-thin wash of copper or nickel on it. The difference is the thickness of the coating. It is very hard to find true plated shot like we had many years ago, which truly made the shot harder. It did nothing for the hardness of the lead inside, but provided an overall hardness factor above that of the lead within, due to the hardness of the plating. That increase in hardness is nearly non-existent with the shot sold today as plated shot. It is entirely possible to have harder plain lead shot, just by addition of more antimony, or by hardening processes, than from the microscopic washing with copper or nickel.

I know some pigeon shooters who swear by RST's pigeon loads of nickel "plated" shot. I have no way of knowing if it is truly plated or just washed with nickel. Never patterned them.

SRH

I'm sure Stan is right. Plated shot today is probably a scam. However, I think Lubaloy shot in the early days was probably a scam also. It would be easy to test our theories. Personally, I don't care, because I have shot and counted many 90% patterns with lead shot, so I really don't need plated shot.

Ballistic Products has nickel plated shot imported from Italy, and it produces excellent patterns, and it did use to kill waterfowl quite well before Uncle Sugar banned it.

It's been decades since I bought and loaded NP shot for the 10 ga.
BP sold high quality Italian shot that patterned head and shoulders better than the copper plated Winchester Lubaloy. It's good to know that the quality shot is still available from BP. Gil

All you have to do is take different brands, of the same size shot, to a machine shop and ask them to test it for hardness. For an accurate comparison all the shot you test must be of the same diameter (size).

The hardness of the shot is the biggest issue, and the place where your patterns are helped or hurt. "Drawing feathers" is a non-issue for me at this point. That said, I will not argue that a true plated shot may well drive into a pigeons vitals better from the rear end, but I can't prove it. Common sense tells me that the harder the shot, plated or not, the less of a problem "drawing feathers" will be. But again, I can't prove that.

SRH

Back then I did test the hardness of the pellets - we had the equipment at work - and there was very little difference between Magnum lead, copper plated, and nickle plated; in fact the magnum lead was the hardest, but the nickel patterned tightest, then copper, then lead.
I had no way to test roundness but they all looked about equal in that department. Of course after the outstanding pattern results with downright ugly original Hevi-Shot one has to wonder if aerodynamics plays that big a role at all.

Ron Forsyth, poster child for Australian pigeon bounty hunters, had true plated shot (20% of pellet diameter, as I recall) custom made and found less pattern difference than for hard vs soft shot. Dr. A. C. Jones, in his book "Sporting Shotgun Performance," also found that soft shot patterns bloomed more rapidly than did hard shot patterns at a statistically valid level. I'm going to say that anyone wishing to follow up on any of the theories would do well by using Dr. Jones's Insights program for computerized pattern analysis. Per his research, there is so much variability in shotgun patterns that you must shoot and analyze ten (10), yep, ten, patterns to draw any statistically valid conclusions!

Semi-rant follows. The reason, IMO, that there is so much confusion over shotgun patterns is that until Dr. Jones's work there was just no practical way to do valid pattern analysis. I would encourage anyone planning to do pattern work to use the Insight program.

DDA

Top pick would be Clever T4 Pigeon with high antimony shot of very round and uniform size pellets.