doublegunshop.com - home Forums Thread Like Summary - Waterfowl loads in ultra slow mo video

Interesting study of shot string length of various loads, copper coated bismuth, lead, steel, tss and choke effect of length. Video shot with a $300,000 camera. Camera set up at muzzle and other distances up to 40 yards from muzzle. Actual video and analysis minus full gab of videographer appears later in video Gil

Very interesting pictures, due to color and resolution. However, I watched films like this as a kid in the 60's. The medium was black and white film and lower resolution but the speed was adequate at that time to see the shot string well. The issue that didn't exist then was the various pellet materials. The fundamental question is the effect of the stringing in the real world. I have always embraced the concept of light charges for bore on a theoretical basis because it minimizes bore scrub. Not because of dispersion per se but it keeps shot loss from the pattern at a minimum. It is interesting to calculate the numerical impact of stringing.

As a basis, assume that you are shooting a dove or duck at 40 yds. Pick a shot velocity of 800 fps. Assume the bird is travelling at 40 mph. Most static pattern studies show that the really even effective zone in most 30" patterns is around 20" in diameter. Call it 2 feet as an approximation.

At these conditions, a 10 foot long shot string crosses the flight path in 1/80 second. A bird at 40 mph would move less than 9" in this time. It would take roughly 2-3/4 seconds to cross the entire pattern. These numbers would indicate that the stringing should have essentially no effect on delivering a lethal charge to the bird. It depends almost exclusively on accurate shooting, adequate shot charge and pellet energy and penetration. This is in a pass shooting situation. At closer distances, with shorter strings and higher shot velocities, it is entirely a non-issue. Performance still depends on the same issues. You wouldn't knowingly hunt with a gun that has a load/choke combination that wouldn't reliably kill the bird. That brings it down to a matter of of reliably shooting within 18" or so of where the bird will be when the shot arrives. George Digweed, who I always considered maybe the best shotgunner who ever lived, was assked what chokes he used in his Beretta for winning a world championship. He said he used full and full for everything on the course (shots from 10 to 50+ yards) so he could see where he was shooting. He followed up with the fact that the chokes were stuck in his gun since they hadn't been out in the years of the competition he had used it.

In other words, use a load with enough pellet energy and a choke with enough pattern density to provide reasonable hits. Then learn to shoot.

Here's the follow-up video!

Some interesting food for thought.

The owner of Patternmaster must've run over his dog...Gil

When I first had a shotgun barrel threaded for choke tubes I only owned one shotgun, but I had three barrels for it, a 26" IC, a 28" M and a 30" F. it was a Remington 1100 my Dad gave me for my 16th birthday. I had shot many patterns with those barrels and was accustomed to what I thought a typical shot pattern looked like, with it's very "hot core". I had the 30" F barrel threaded and bought a set of CompNChoke tubes. I commenced to shoot more patterns to see if there was any difference, on paper, saving and labeling the patterns. I was astounded to actually see a difference I could quantify. Simply put, there was less of the total percentage of pellets in the hot core and more in the outer 10" "ring" of the pattern. I immediately realized that this was a good thing for clay target shooters, especially, as it decreased the chances of a clay slipping through the pattern in the periphery.

I took the rolled up patterns to the office of the owner of CompNChoke and showed them to him. He was surprised I had gone to the trouble of patterning them that thoroughly, but smiled when I showed him evidence of what I had seen. He may have been correct, or he may have been wrong in what he said next, I don't know. But, he said that was the result of precision machining in the choke internals, and said that was something that was sorely lacking in the Remington's fixed choke barrels. Obviously there are other choke tube companies, and fixed choke barrels, that are choked with precision and care, and will deliver the most uniformly distributed patterns possible, but I'll go to my grave knowing the difference I saw between those chokes and MY old fixed choke barrels.