I like Doug's "each shotgun has a best load for each size of shot." I have seen powder changes accomplish much even though no other component change was made! It also may be that one gun shoots plated 8s with one powder well, and magnum unplated 8s with another powder altogether. How do you analyze whether it was the shot or the powder that made the difference? Unfortunately, Dr. Jones did not find it to be so. There is so much variability within the needed 10 pattern sample that it is easy to get untrue results with small pattern samples; most data is one pattern samples.
And it would be important to me to know if the plated shot was hard antimony shot...in my opinion BP nickel plated shot is rather soft. Good pattern data will include shot hardness; there are relatively cheap tools that will give fairly accurate shot hardness. Steve
DDA
