Category: The Others

Category group for the larger gauges not primarily the focus of this site.

Super Steel – Sometimes

It’s been a while since I’ve managed to get out to the fields, but a snatched couple of hours, first thing this morning, paid dividends. The weather was windy, but bright and I managed a mixed bag of three for five shots, which I thought was quite respectable.

Stock Extensions

I’ve been making inquiries this week about stock extension pads. The pad my wife kindly ordered for me, for my Birthday, was returned to the supplier as unsuitable. It was simply too large and fell off every time the gun was pointed skyward, for every gun with which its use was intended. That pad was exchanged for an alternative model, which proved equally over-sized and therefore likewise unsuitable.

After this, I decided to take advice. Having constructed – I flatter myself – what may have been the post with the highest density of euphemisms per paragraph in the history of one of the major shooting fora (and got it past the moderators) to request opinions on a next step, I received some suggestions on alternative products and approaches. A friend has offered to assist with the “Russian Purdeys” (as he refers to my Baikals) but I may have managed to come up with an answer in the meantime: “home economics”.

Crises of masculinity aside (I’m yet to have one), I rather like the fact that I can sew. In fact, I can sew rather well, when I put my mind to it. This afternoon, after lunch, whilst supervising the small people in the house, I dug out my wife’s sewing box and tightened the elasticated part of the stock extension, such that it now doesn’t fall off the back of either of the Baikals, rendering it useful. Result!

Superb Steel (Sometimes)

The reason for interrupting an account of this morning’s wanderings with comments on the subject of stock extensions was simply to point out that the requisite progress on making several of my guns fit had not been achieved by the time I left the house at 8am.

Since the conditions precluded the possibility of doing any patterning and I wasn’t feeling optimistic enough to take an unfamiliar, single-barreled 20 gauge to the fields, I retrieved my Browning Maxus from the cabinet and a box of the Gamebore “Super Steel” 32g/#4 cartridges from the cupboard.

Now usually, I’m a sceptic about all things steel, because I’m far too aware of its limitations in comparison to lead and other more ballistically-efficient metals. As a hunter, I think we should be using the most effective ammunition we can, within reason. Lead is readily and cheaply available and I have long suspected the claims for lead poisoning in wildfowl to have been somewhat selective and over-blown. Either way, the law says we can’t use it over wetlands, so I don’t – but that doesn’t mean I can’t be suspicious of it either. Usually, it’s of no concern -it’s not as if I do much ‘fowling anyway.

However: even accounting for all of the above, I have always trusted the Gamebore load and have taken some of my longest, best birds with it. Although that does include a handful of stratospheric ducks – the quarry for which it was intended – it’s actually rather a good wood pigeon cartridge and proved its worth again this morning with a clean kill of a passing bird around 45 yards from the hedgerow where I was walking.

When I left, I had wanted to change the choke in the Maxus to the ½ choke, which has tended to perform well with the steel cartridge, but I had unable to find the choke key and in the end, had to make do with ¾. I needn’t have worried. I don’t usually “see” the shot cloud, but the low sun this morning made it quite apparent, as did the damage to the bird, that this was a good, tight (as opposed to blown) pattern. I may even shoot a couple of plates for the sake of interest at some point.

A Little Decoying

One problem which occurs when one spends the majority of the time shooting small-gauge guns, is that when one does finally take a 12-gauge for a walk, it’s all to easy to feel “unrestricted” and take on distant birds which are significantly further out than the 10-15 yards of extra usable range of a 12 gauge over (for example) a .410 will allow for. That said, I don’t feel, other than having more confidence to take on the opportunities presented than I might have had whilst carrying a .410, that I suffered from this misguided instinct as I perhaps have in the past.

The dead crow I picked up this morning was, to be fair, over 90 paces from the natural hide I’d been using, with a handful of decoys, to try and encourage a large number of crows that were milling around on the second farm into a “shootable” location.

Before anyone jumps to any conclusions however, readers will be reassured that, when I shot the crow the first time, it was no further out than the wood pigeon I had taken earlier (probably closer, in fact) and that, when it started to fold, clearly hit, I fully expected it to come down there and then.

In the high wind, however, the bird appeared to recover and glide a little, which prompted me to take a second shot at it to try and prevent it  escaping and suffering significantly before it finally expired. The second shot also connected and killed the bird outright – I was greatly relieved – but the wind carried it still further before it came down and necessitated a long walk to retrieve it.

It is plainly unethical to shoot at birds 75 yards away, so at this point, it seems worth reassuring readers that, in any situation other than trying to dispatch wounded, escaping quarry, I wouldn’t have raised my gun to a bird that far out – even knowing and freely admitting my habit of taking on “reasonable” long-range birds (e.g. 40-55 yards) perhaps slightly too often.

Ignoring that fact, it does highlight an important feature of steel shot, which was particularly apparent today. Although, out to a certain range, steel shot of the right size and velocity will kill just as well as lead, the distance over which its effectiveness “tails off” seems to be much shorter than that of lead.

What I mean is that, if one’s cartridge containing lead shot will kill well enough at 40 yards all day long, then taking a few 50- or even 55-yard shots isn’t going to result in lots of wounded birds. Yes, you’re playing the odds unless performance is very good, but you’ll probably still wound few enough (good shooting assumed) that no-one watching you will feel you’re pushing any ethical boundaries.

On the other hand, with steel, a 40-yard cartridge which kills reliably can easily become a 45-yard cartridge that wounds 50% of all the birds it connects with. Assuming that we use larger shot sizes for steel, as is common practice, then the larger, harder pellets (which make bigger holes) may even kill more effectively than equally-energetic lead pellets – but the greater drag and lower momentum eventually catches up and they become ineffective more quickly: playing the odds at the border of a steel cartridge’s range isn’t likely to go well on the basis of my limited experience.

I’ll try to look into the mathematics of this in the next few weeks and see if I can work up some numbers which support this hypothesis.

An Unexpected Visitor

Whilst hiding in the hedge, keeping watch over the decoys, I had an unusual visitor. A female Goshawk (I’m about 95% certain of my identification), floated gently into the middle of my crow decoys, seemed to inspect them for a few minutes and then remained, not 25 yards away from me, accepting my admiration disdainfully, until a pair of crows (neither hollow nor plastic), appeared and chased her off again.

I had been under the impression that the Goshawks in this country were generally kept by falconers and that they didn’t appear in the wild, but I look forward to being corrected and having my identification of the bird supported by new information. Whatever it was, it was a magnificent bird and a pleasure to see it.

The third item in my mixed bag, as yet unmentioned, was a large, male rabbit, which appeared out of the hedgerow just as I was walking back from picking up the crow. Usually I wouldn’t shoot them as I haven’t enjoyed eating them in the past, but this was an instinctive shot – not perfectly executed, I have to admit – and taken on the grounds that, since the hare proved so pleasant the other week, I thought I’d give rabbit a try again. I don’t suppose the farmer will mind. After that, I field dressed it and took it home, feeling that I’d had, all in all, a rather good morning.

Cartridge Anorak

One of the downsides of being a “cartridge anorak” (and there are many, I can assure you) is that one spends so much time patterning, testing, analyzing and understanding that, when it comes down to it, it’s very easy to forget how to actually shoot. There are of course those of my acquaintance who would say that I’ve never given any impression of knowing how to do that anyway and I’ll be the first to agree – I never have been and never will be a great shot.

I do make the occasional great shot of course. The crow I knocked down at around 9am this morning on my walk around was a very, very long way out – far enough that I shouldn’t have attempted it – and would have been a nice start to the day, if only I hadn’t missed a handful of “sitters” within the ten minutes following. It’s quite a struggle to get underneath wood pigeons at the moment (they’re not short of places to feed), so most of those were crows – and really should have been dead crows.

A lot of the time I’m too tired to see the birds before they’re out of easy range and much of the rest of the time I seem to be hesitant. Out of a motivation to stop shooting distant birds, I now appear to have the worst of both worlds: I still shoot at distant birds, albeit less than I used to (and so take home fewer birds), but the time I now spend thinking about whether any given bird is too far out is often the moment I ought to be swinging the gun and firing at it before it becomes so.

Perhaps I’m going soft in my old age.

I ignored a another pair of inquisitive hares today, as I have done the last three times I’ve been out. They seem – the leverets particularly – to be quite unafraid of humans and will approach almost to within touching distance if one remains still. I suspect it’s poor eyesight – they bolt as soon as I make any noise – but it wouldn’t have been difficult to come home with a bagful on any of the last few visits to that farm.

I have heard it suggested that our landowner wants their numbers reduced a little – unfortunately, to deter the coursers who bring their dogs to chase them – but until I’m given word “officially” I’ll be leaving them alone. I still have a couple in the freezer and it’s game pie for dinner on Monday – perhaps I’ll go and dig one out.

All that aside, I felt very rusty this morning.

Pattern Testing

I did manage to do a series of patterns for the Eley “Extralong” #6 cartridge as planned. I also shot a handful for an experimental 16 gauge load (see below).

The Eley cartridge was – as the Eley cartridges have tended to be – better than most of the other makes, but only middling-to-good in comparitive performance. Hard #7 or #7½ shot still seems to be the better option in a .410, though perhaps my vehemence on the subject of larger shot has reduced a little by now – I can imagine why someone might choose to use either of the 3″ #6 Eley cartridges, though I personally wouldn’t choose them over some of the others I’ve tested.

The 16 gauge patterning was an experiment to determine whether 28g / #5 would perform well enough to replace the usual 28g / #6 cartridge I load for that gun. The motivation was simple: I would only have to buy #5 shot for reloading if it worked, which halves the minimum outlay on shot and allows me to buy less, more often. The trouble is, although the cartridge performed broadly adequately, I’m not convinced.

My 16 gauge gun is a Baikal with tight ½ and Full chokes and has always shot the #6 version of the recipe I use very well. I expect 80%+ patterns from the full choke barrel if I’ve loaded them correctly.

The 40-yard patterns shot with the #5 version were adequate, if a little below what I’d usually expect giving 119, 137 and 142 of (avg.) 203 pellets in the standard circle for 59%, 67% and 70% performance respectively. These patterns will all kill birds but they are much less performant than the original loading. This is perhaps due to the use of new, 67mm cases, rather than the 70mm cases I employed originally, which necessitated an adjustment to the shot column and reduced the crimp depth. Re-patterning the #6 load would perhaps be a sensible precaution in light of this performance reduction.

40-yard pattern shot through the full choke of the Baikal 16 gauge using a 28g / #5 reload.

Whilst the original #6 loading produced a usable 50-yard pattern of between 130 and 150 pellets, the #5 loading doesn’t begin to approach this, putting an average of 85 pellets in the circle at that distance. This suggests that it would be wise to continue to purchase and use #6 shot.

50-yard pattern shot through the full choke of the Baikal 16 gauge using a 28g / #5 reload.

Discoveries & Results

I’ve discovered various interesting things about the garden gun and 20 gauge in the last 24 hours.

Garden Gun

To answer the oldest question first, the barrel of the garden gun is stamped with “Modern Arms Company Ltd. London & Bromley” which dates it to between 1928 and 1942, making it between 75 and 89 years old. I don’t believe it will be possible to age it more accurately than this, at least until I take the action out of the stock to look for more engravings (i.e. a date code).

Another helpful piece of information which has popped up today is the fact that the acorns embossed on the head stamps of the cartridges I was given with the gun are typical of ammunition manufactured by RWS, which means that I have been able to identify the #10 cartridges as their “double shot” loading. This will allow me to put a second “official” pattern testing page for the garden gun onto the site and formalizes the data we have for the gauge so far.

I’ve been able to count the patterns and the picture remains largely the same as yesterday. The RWS #10 cartridge produced good, dense patterns at 20 yards, averaging 162 in the standard circle, but adequate penetration for any use on live game at this distance remains doubtful.

20-yard pattern shot through the Modern Arms 9mm garden gun using the RWS “Flobert” 7½g/#10 shell.

The as-yet-unidentified nickel-cased cartridge patterned relatively poorly as expected, averaging 90 in the standard circle at 20 yards. The Fiocchi loading is perhaps borderline usable on small game, provided one aims the gun, placing and average of 51 pellets into a 20″ circle at 20 yards, though the patterns, such as they were, still seemed rather uneven. I remain curious to pattern that brand with a larger shot size – perhaps #9.

So far, I haven’t deconstructed any of the 9mm shells to discover their contents, but the full data (and an estimate of the shot size of the nickel cartridge) will be published when I have provided that “context”.

One point of confusion remains. The Fiocchi cartridge, patterned at 10 yards, placed only 46 pellets onto the paper, yet the 20-yard patterns contained at least that many pellets in the circle, with more in the spread outside it. At present, I cannot explain this anomaly and continue to ponder how, beyond that particular cartridge having been incompletely loaded, it could possibly have occurred.

20 Gauge

I counted the 40-yard pattern I shot with the 20 gauge before the 20- and 30-yard patterns. It quickly became clear that it wasn’t necessary to count the shorter range patterns as the pellet count of 184 (of 237) pellets in the circle at 40 yards is more than sufficient. In fact, that represents a percentage performance of approximately 78%, which is much, much better than the 57-60% one would expect for a nominal half choke.

Although that’s only a single pattern, the other two shot are clearly close to 100% patterns, given the spread, so the chance of the 40-yard pattern being a “one off” is low. (I will count the shorter distance patterns later, when there is less of interest than needs to be analyzed and written up!) Even if I lost 20% of the pellets in that circle, it would still be a good pattern, so there’s plenty of wiggle room, so to speak.

I suspect, having examined the shot and on the basis of my experiences trying to find a performant cartridge for my .410, that there really must be something worthwhile about the “diamond shot” that Gamebore advertise – it must be very, very hard indeed to give this kind of performance in an ordinary, lightly-choked gun. Unfortunately, their .410 “Hunting” cartridge appears not to feature that kind of lead.

I suppose if I were to buy a super-fast cartridge loaded with #7 shot, I might just make the Accacio into a short-range gun, using the greater pellet deformation and spread to my advantage, but really, it appears that, once again, the tight-shooting gun / cartridge combinations have searched me out and found me and that for deliberately-limited-to-20-yard performance, I’m going to have to resort to my .410 with 2″ #9 shells or the new 9mm…

40-yard pattern shot through the Accacio 20 gauge using the Gamebore “Regal Game” 24g/#6 shell.

A Bit Hairy

Rather stupidly, I forgot to check whether the abbreviation “Ltd.” appeared on the markings of the garden gun, but it’s late and I’m tired. For that reason, I’m not going to do a full write up of today’s trip, with pattern counts, etc. – that can wait until tomorrow when there’s more time and I’ve had a chance to cut open some cartridges.

A Disclaimer

I don’t want to give the impression in what follows, that I’m cavalier about the safety aspect of shooting. Rather, the opposite is true. What happened today was safe because I was very aware that I had with me two guns which a) I hadn’t ever fired before and b) whose condition I didn’t know. I acted accordingly and when the unexpected happened, nobody was endangered because I was cautious and had taken appropriate precautions.

The Garden Gun

When I got to my usual “firing range”, I tested the garden gun first. I’d never fired a rimfire (of any kind) and I had three sets of cartridges to try. These were an unknown brass-cased load of #10 shot, a nickel-cased load of entirely unknown provenance and some (brass-cased) Fiocchi #6 (2.7mm or English #5½) shells. The first two of those were provided with the gun and the latter were obtained from my local dealer on the way home from work today.

The first shot – one of the brass #10 loads – surprised me somewhat. The report on firing was, although quiet by shotgun standards, louder than I expected it to be and although this gave the impression of a substantial powder charge, it was still quite possible to hear the shot cloud tearing through the patterning paper. Not only was this the case, but sound of the pellet impacts was of noticeably long duration, which suggested a wide variation of low pellet velocities (i.e. a long, slow-moving shot cloud).

After this first “success”, I changed the paper and tried one of the nickel-cased cartridges. On the first attempt, this cartridge failed to fire and I observed the usual precaution of pointing the gun away from me, towards the floor and, after 30 seconds, opening the breech away from me. The firing pin had struck the edge of the case and deformed it, but the cartridge was intact.

Having opened the breech, I turned the cartridge in the chamber and fired again. This time, the gun produced a barely perceptible report and recoil and again the noise of pellets tearing through the paper 20 yards away was very noticeable. Inspection of that pattern suggested that the nickel-cased cartridges probably contained #9 or #8 shot, but I’ll deconstruct one tomorrow and get a definitive answer.

I fired several more cartridges of all three types. None of them produced any real recoil or muzzle blast and all were comfortable to fire without hearing protection (though I only tried this with one of each to check). Another brass #10 round failed to fire on the first attempt, but I didn’t check the cartridge that time – I simply waited 30 seconds with the gun in a safe direction, cycled the bolt and fired again. I have to say though, that without any noticeable recoil, I have a nagging voice in my head which is wondering whether it fired the first time and I simply didn’t notice!

I began to suspect, after the second nickel-cased round failed to fire, that the spring in the bolt had weakened because of the gun’s age. A second attempt caused that cartridge to fire and split the case mouth, though without any obvious variation in recoil / power. Others of both of the types which came with the gun also suffered case splits.

Whilst I would usually expect ammunition to last forever, the fact that the two kinds that had come with the gun both suffered misfires, but the brand new Fiocchi shells didn’t makes me think (and hope) that the cause is perhaps age-related degradation of the ammunition or perhaps the hardness of the case metal used for those particular brands. It may be the case that the ammunition had been poorly stored.

More testing will show whether it’s the ammunition or mechanism at fault.

Patterns

I shot several patterns at 20 yards with all three cartridges and one at 10 yards with the Fiocchi cartridge. The patterns of the #10 cartridge were really rather good – I expect them to show 120+ pellets in the standard circle when I count them tomorrow. I wouldn’t like to guess what the individual pellet energy would have been, but I suspect it would be too low to point them at anything alive at that distance. I seem to remember calculating that 8-10 yards was the range at which #10 fired at 600fps became borderline for pigeons, rabbits, grey squirrels, etc.

On the other end of the scale, the Fiocchi cartridges do appear to produce a usable pattern at 10 yards if one uses a 20″ circle rather than the standard 30″. I doubt they would be humane at any greater distance, but the question of pellet energy doesn’t really exist: even with a slow, 600fps muzzle velocity, they’ll still retain enough energy to kill small game whilst what little pattern there is survives.

An Italian acquaintance of mine has described the use of the 9mm shot cartridge on really quite large quarry, but I remain unconvinced. Since I’ve no plans to this gun’s effectiveness on live game, performing the “wet telephone directory” penetration test may provide a useful approximation.

The counts and percentages will follow tomorrow, but these initial conclusions do support the use of #8 or #9 shot if one wants to get the maximum possible range out of the diminutive 9mm cartridge – although, the third, nickel-cased brand of cartridges which probably contain shot of one of those sizes did not produce very good patterns, unfortunately.

Accacio

Before I started testing the garden gun, I wandered around the boundaries of the farm with the 20 gauge. In hindsight, this would have made no difference at all even had there been birds to shoot at, since, in trying to deactivate the safety catch of the gun, I had inadvertently engaged it instead. I discovered this mistake later, as I attempted to test fire the gun and shoot a 20-yard pattern with the Gamebore “Regal Game” cartridges which I’d bought, thinking that they might turn out to be rather good. It appears that I was right.

Generally, I don’t like safety catches and don’t use them. Rather, I make a point of not pointing the gun in the direction of anything I’m not intending to kill. That approach saved a lot of ball ache today.

Having attempted and failed, with the characteristic “click”, to fire the gun and produce my first pattern, I followed the usual procedure (again!) and pointed the gun safely at the floor for 30 seconds before doing anything else. I didn’t expect the cartridge to be at fault and thought rather that, having paid a mere £30 for each gun, there was a good chance of them both being mechanically unsound.

After half a minute or so, I planned to open the gun, breech pointing away from me, barrel pointing at the floor, in case the action of breaking the gun were to release the firing pin and cause the gun to fire before I could extract the cartridge. It occurred to me before I attempted this, that some guns have mechanical safety catches which actually block the movement of the hammer / pin and that it might be worth engaging the safety for that reason. I pushed the safety slide through: the gun fired.

Happily, safe handling prevented anything more than a few stems of barley stubble from being destroyed, but it was a little surprising nonetheless. I quickly regained my composure and realized that a previous owner must have repainted the red part of the safety slide – on the wrong side! Furthermore, there was enough strength in the hammer spring to fire the cartridge, even after the sears had been disengaged and the hammer and pin were held on the safety!

On my Browning  – and indeed, every other gun I can remember handling with a trigger-mounted slide-type safety – one pushes the safety button to reveal the red colouring when one is ready to fire. On Accacio single-barrelled folding shotguns, perhaps modified by careless owners, one apparently presses the red side of the safety slide to hide the colouring when one is ready to fire. I trust that readers can understand why that might be confusing!

Regardless, I quickly realized my mistake and shot patterns at 20, 30 and 40 yards. What the results of those might be, remain to be seen, but my instinctive reaction on seeing them was that the Gamebore cartridges are producing rather more than the 57%-60% performance one might expect from the gun’s nominal half choke (0.017″ constriction).

I had hoped to use the 20 gauge occasionally (if at all) as a short-range gun, perhaps with #7 shot, as I don’t really have any others set up for close work (the 9mm notwithstanding). However, it would appear that I’ve found a good long-range cartridge from the off, so to speak, and it’s hard to ignore that. I’ll know more tomorrow, but it looks promising.

That’ll do for now. And please remember dear readers – “muzzle awareness” is rule #1. Today might have ended very differently if I hadn’t been both very cautious about handling my new guns and very careful about the directions in which they were pointing.

Shot Size 4¾

Since I started patterning my new 34g/#5 reload, I’ve been slightly curious as to why the average pellet count for the cartridge is so low. Historically, #5 shot has tended to number 220 to the ounce, or approximately 7.76 pellets per gram of shot, which should put around 264 in the cartridge. Certainly that (or rather, 270) was what I was aiming at, which makes the 246 pellet average somewhat lower than expectations. Even allowing for some variation on the basis of size, antimony content, the quantity dropped by the bushings on the loader, etc., it was still difficult to explain the aforementioned discrepancy.

I was browsing the website of the Clay & Game company, from whom I bought my last supply of #5 shot, this afternoon. I was really looking at prices for a 20 gauge conversion kit for my Lee press (why buy cartridges when one can load one’s own!?), but I noticed whilst I was there that they advertise their #5 shot as being 2.85mm in diameter. The comments of an acquaintance elsewhere (coincidentally) prompted me to calculate that this represents a size – contrary to Clay & Game’s own shot size table – equivalent to 208 pellets per ounce – very slightly larger than a traditional English #5, or approximately equivalent to #4¾.

The difference between myself and my acquaintance is that he thinks that the kind of difference I’ve just described is significant. Nonetheless, it does answer the question: a 34g load of “number 4¾” should contain approximately 249 pellets – not far from the 246 average in shot drops I’ve counted.

Feeding The Garden Gun

I’ve been calling various local(-ish) RFDs in the last couple of days to try and find a source of sensible cartridges to feed the new garden gun.

The wisdom of the learnéd – as far as I can glean it from the internet – is that the RWS ammunition loaded in #9 and #10 shot sizes is a good place to start and that the #9 “double shot” cartridge – in spite of the arguments against the practice made by myself and others on this website – is suitable for small game out to 15-20 yards. I am yet to find a supplier.

Nonetheless, I have been offered boxes of Fiocchi cartridges containing (Italian) #6 shot. Of course, this doesn’t surprise me, since all small bore cartridges are loaded with #6 shot! The fact that this practice extends even to the tiny 9mm, into which you can fit a meagre four drams of lead, amused me somewhat. I’ll buy some at some point, in spite of the fact that this loading would comprise approximately 60 pellets and have an effective pattern area of around 8″ at a maximum of 10 yards, irrespective of choke. Well – I can always prove or disprove that theory, can’t I?

The best candidate shop is closed on Wednesdays, so I left a message. Hopefully I’ll hear back from them tomorrow.