" ............ That said, I really think that the initial purpose of this post was to provide proof that setback of pellets in a shot shell does occur, and the percentage of pellets in the load that are deformed increase as the bore diameter decreases, naysayers notwithstanding .......... and not that it necessarily makes huge differences at the target.
Stan you are correct
I agree set back and deformation does occur, I also agree that small bores experience it more than larger bores. I agree it does not necessarily make a huge difference.
Going back to Brister, he stresses the important difference in shot string between loads using hard vs soft shot. Here, I think, is where we come to the difference between the impact of deformation on a smallbore vs a 12ga. As noted, the obvious advantage of the 12 is that it can push a bigger load. Thus a heavier load with soft shot might perform as well as the lighter load of a smallbore with hard shot. But if you use soft shot in a smallbore, where you have fewer pellets to start with, then you're going to see more impact. I'd say that using quality loads with good components is more important when you're pushing less than an ounce of shot than when you're pushing 1 1/8 or more. Or at least that seems logical to me.
