How soon our memories fade.
Mike Campbell, a fox aficionado, posted many of his patterns on this site concocted of the various spreader inserts.
The post or X style wide insert definitely deflects pallets away from the center of the pattern. Creating holes.
His solution was to cut them off a little shorter, and then put 1/8 of an ounce of shot above themPrior to crimping.
That resulted in a wider and evenly filled out pattern.
It was all documented here. Im a bit surprised that no one even mentioned his work. The same for Dr. Andrew Jones work on patterns.