I have all the respect in the world for Don, and for his endless striving to try to encourage armchair patterning experts to get more scientific in their evaluations, and discussions of same. It is people like him who help to keep us grounded .
But ........ as much as I agree with Don about evaluating patterns, I have to say something. I don't mean this to be belittling of scientific research and data, in any way, but there is just so much help it can provide you in the effort to raise your shell to bird average. This may sound harsh ..... but, show me a shooter who is obsessed with evaluating patterns and I will show you a so-so clay or game shot. Brister may have been the exception, I never knew him. I have a lot of respect for him, but I've never met anybody like him. I have been friends with many excellent shotgunners, some of whom are among the best in the world at sporting clays and live pigeons. None of them, I mean none, have ever spent any significant time patterning and evaluating patterns. They shoot quality ammunition, quality guns with good chokes, and they SHOOT, a lot. They do not obsess over chokes, patterns or loads. If the combination they are using breaks birds well, and they cannot see any obvious failures, they just keep shooting.
I know from experience that you can overthink shotgunning. As much as I enjoy occasional patterning of new loads, I don't obsess over them. I don't use screw in chokes in my primary comp gun. It has fixed chokes at .020" and .020". I KNOW that I should benefit from good spreaders on very close stuff, but it doesn't work out that way. The more I think about "helping" my shooting with open chokes, spreaders, etc., the worse I shoot. You wanna kill more birds with less shells? SHOOT MORE!!!!! Pattern your gun/load to make sure it is not shooting a terribly patchy pattern, then fugettaboutit, and just shoot more. Patterning is much more useful for visually showing you what the maximum range is at which you should shoot a bird or clay, with a choke/load combination, than it is for determining which load may give you a percentage point or two more breaks, IMO.
Talking about all this is entertaining and helps pass those days and nights when we can't get out and shoot, but for goodness sakes don't think it will make you a better shot. Only shooting will do that. Lots of shooting.
Rant over.
SRH
