Month: January 2017

I was able to get out into the fields for a few hours this morning as planned and was able to continue testing the range of .410 cartridges I have now acquired. After taking 20 minutes or so to measure out a 40-yard range and set up some bamboo canes to support the pattern “plates”, I was ready to go, but pondered for a few minutes more what might be the best direction to explore with the very limited supply of cardboard I had available.

In the event, I chose to finish testing the Eley “Trap” cartridges and shot the patterns which the results of last weekend’s testing suggested might produce dividends, rather than start on a new brand of shells. I’m pleased to report that my hunch was correct: the Yildiz’s ½ and ¾ chokes do indeed give significantly better performance with the Eley cartridges which strongly supports my feeling that the full choke is over-tight (.025″ constriction) and that the full choke patterns shot with both cartridges tested last week were blown.

There was little to choose between the ½ and ¾ chokes. The former averaged 116 (42%) pellets in the standard circle at 40 yards, which isn’t far short of the 120 pellets I’d consider to be the absolute minimum for hunting, whilst the latter managed an average of 133 (49%) in the circle: somewhat above that bare minimum density and approaching the 140-pellet mark, which I consider to be preferable for small winged game (i.e. wood pigeons, jackdaws).

As you may have guessed from the picture above, I was also presented with the opportunity to test the cartridge on live quarry today. As I was setting up the equipment for the photograph of the patterning equipment to be taken, the jackdaw pictured therein arrived over the tree line squawking noisily, drawing too much attention to itself to be ignored. I managed to load the gun in time and it was taken cleanly at a distance of between 25 and 30 yards with the ½-choke barrel of the gun. To my utter disbelief, it folded perfectly.

A Question of Confidence

It’s a sign of how maligned the .410 is in some quarters that – even in spite of my consistent and long-running refusal to accept shooters’ opinions and prejudices as valuable, unless I have first-hand evidence of their validity – I still doubt both my ability to effectively shoot a small bore gun and the gun’s ability to do what is required of it.

As it is, that is precisely what I achieved with the jackdaw (which the landowner has given standing orders to shoot on sight) this morning: a clean kill at sensible range with a good, instinctive shot. Along with that, I’m happy to report, I successfully resisted the urge to “push the envelope” and take pot shots at distant birds, though the opportunity to do so occurred regularly. My self-restraint is, as I hoped it would, developing with the regular use of the Yildiz.

However, I have an admission to make here and a serious point to derive from it:

Although the aforementioned jackdaw folded nicely and was obviously dead in the air, I was so surprised by what I’d just witnessed that the bird received the contents of the other barrel on the way down, quite unnecessarily. Unavoidably present in that moment of raising, swinging and firing the gun was the expectation that it wouldn’t be enough – that some insufficiency was present which meant the bird wouldn’t come down cleanly; an expectation that a second attempt would naturally be required.

Clearly, this expectation shows an unjustified lack of confidence in gun and cartridge which needs to be overcome. No doubt it is the result of “conditioning” over the years that I have been shooting, perhaps by those who hold that the .410 is a gun for sitting quarry at short range, or those others who claim that #7½ is too small to be effective on game.

For my part, I have never believed the .410 to be unsuitable for wing shooting, though it has many characteristics which make its use for that purpose challenging. I have some sympathy with the argument that #7½ is on the small side for live quarry, if only because many of us prefer to take (or attempt) birds at far longer ranges than those for which #7½ is suitable.

That said, the kinetic energy of an average #7½ pellet (and therefore it’s ability to penetrate through to the quarry’s vitals) is the same at 25 yards as that of a #6 pellet at 40 yards. On this basis, there is no reason that one should not use #7½ shot for short range birds, if one is happy to employ #6 for all reasonable ranges. Killing the bird or not is a function of hitting it with enough pellets of sufficient energy to damage its internal organs such that it cannot live. There is no rule about how big the pellets must be, provided they are energetic enough.

However, given that the subtlety required to understand that point is beyond (or outside of the interest) of many shooters, I can understand why the voice of experience argues “nothing smaller than #6” for live quarry shooting: if people will not investigate for themselves the finer points of cartridge behaviour, then it is better that they are taught to use something which will always be sufficient, rather than risk wounding unnecessarily with a cartridge for which better alternatives are available.

As it is, the second shot hit the jackdaw too, but had no effect beyond slightly altering the direction in which it was falling. As I’ve written here previously, I have never before shot birds with shot as small as #7½, but given that I am now apparently in possession of a gun and cartridge which meet the pattern density requirement I have set for them, my focus must, to some extent, turn to answering the question of energetic sufficiency I have explored a little above. I have the 40-yard pattern, but will the pellets kill a pigeon cleanly at that range, if I do my bit? My gut feeling is that killing birds out to about 35 yards should be perfectly possible. Whether the cartridges will really be effective for those end-of-range shots, only experience will tell.

Next Steps

As I mentioned above, I had a limited supply of cardboard to shoot at today. I did pattern two of the Fiocchi “Magnum” 19g/#7½ (Italian) carridges, although the initial results do not look as promising as I hoped they might. I will do a proper test of those cartridges next (when my wife has had long enough to order more expensive things and, in so doing, acquire a new supply of boxes for me to cut up!) and then follow on with the other three brands currently sitting on the shelf. For hunting, I will continue with the Eley loading until I find (or do not find) something better.

So what was unexpected about all that?

If you’re still with me at this point, I can imagine the question you might be asking yourself, having read all of the above and heard me say that everything had pretty much been as I thought it might. You’ll want to know why I gave this post the title I did.

The answer, dear reader, is a slightly sad one, but I note it here in brief, not least so that I can recollect it later and acknowledge it to myself.

When I had finished doing the pattern tests this morning and had finished the pellet counts, I realized I had found a cartridge which met the requirements I had set for it. Although in doing the tests, I’d scared away all of the birds on the farm I was shooting, I had hopes that there might be some birds roosting in a particular treeline on one of the other farms to which I have access, so I packed everything into the car and drove over to look for an opportunity to bag a wood pigeon or two.

I began my walk and, other than taking a third shot at a departing wood pigeon – a miss – there was very little going on, but I decided, for the sake of exercise, to walk the hedgerows anyway and continued on my way.

As I approached the far boundary of the farm, I watched, from some distance away, a large muntjac buck charging across the field in front of me, perhaps escaping from some unseen danger or perhaps not wishing to stay around to discover the owner of the unpleasant smell of human that he had caught on the wind. Nonetheless, he covered all of the 300-400 yards to the boundary at top speed and it was a pleasure to watch his athleticism.

Unfortunately, the buck did not think to change direction when he reached the boundary and charged straight through the hedgerow onto an A-road the other side. Initially, I thought he had escaped across the road, unscathed, but as I carried on, it became clear that a small car and a white van had stopped at the side of the road close to the gap in the hedgerow and, having decided to investigate, it became apparent that the buck had been struck a glancing blow by the small car, which had not killed it outright.

There will no doubt be some readers who will take what I have written above and what follows and conclude that I ought to feel guilt for the turn of events which occurred today. I can only reassure them, I feel none. A scared animal will run from many things and I have no idea whether the deer ran from me, or from some other predator, or simply because he had detected the scent of a female in heat. There were other “exits” in the field which did not lead to a road, which he could have chosen – he did not. I cannot feel responsible for what was, essentially, a deer’s mistake.

When I reached the side of the road, having left my gun securely within the boundaries of the farm, the buck was clearly seriously wounded, but by no means dead. As far as I could detect (my DSC1 course two years ago did not prepare me for this situation) he had a broken spine, broken front leg and was paralyzed from the middle of the back down. There was no prospect of recovery.

The driver of the small car, meanwhile, was somewhat in shock and was being calmed by the gentleman who had stopped his van in front of her car to see what had happened. After assessing the situation, I asked her to telephone the police to report the collision and then to pass the phone to me. This she did and I subsequently spoke to the call handler to confirm the situation, that I was out for my morning walk, was a certificate holder and had my gun with me and that I proposed that the deer should be shot immediately so as to prevent its further suffering. The call handler – kudos to her – took all this in her stride, said that officers in the area would be notified in case any reports of “a man with a gun on the roadside” were made, took my details in case they needed to contact me again and then left me to get on with it.

I suggested to the lady in question that she should continue her journey and that I would deal with the deer and clear up the mess. This she did, willingly enough, after which I dispatched the deer with the .410, waited a few minutes, checked for a blink response (there was none) and dragged it back onto the farm out of the carriageway and examined it. It seemed, given it’s condition and previous athletic performance, to have been a healthy, large animal.

I suppose I find it slightly heartbreaking when animals die on the roads. Disease, predation, starvation – these are all natural ends for a wild animal, but incapacitation by moving vehicle, followed by shooting most certainly is not. Ultimately, although it was certainly not the intended purpose of the .410, I believe I acted compassionately today and I am glad that I was there to do what was necessary – the idea of the deer struggling on for another 20 minutes until a police firearms team arrived to dispatch it doesn’t bear thinking about.

Today I visited several of my local RFDs in the hope of acquiring some new brands of .410 cartridge to test. Happily, I was successful and came home with four new cartridges to pattern. Although a planned brief trip out tomorrow morning will give some time for patterning work, it’s unlikely to be long enough to finish testing the Bornaghi and Eley cartridges and complete reasonable tests on all four of the new cartridges as well, so what I’ve brought home today should keep me busy for the next few weekends, if not longer.

As it happens, I’m currently in the process of designing a portable, collapsible pattern plate which will take 40″ square pieces of cardboard or paper and hold them securely for the purposes of shooting patterns. The idea behind it is to speed up the patterning process with the use of pre-cut squares of cardboard that can be slotted into a frame and to overcome the issues we had last weekend with wind and – to some extent – the driving rain. I’ll post again on this subject at some future point when a little more progress has been made.

The Cartridges

I could post a picture of four boxes of cartridges and leave it at that until I come back with the test results, but those of you who know me will look at it and think “hang on – this chap has been banging on about not using over-sized shot in a .410 for as long as I’ve know him and now he’s gone out and bought cartridges loaded with exactly that!?” With that in mind, I thought it might be worth briefly explaining the rationale behind my decision to buy these particular brands and leave the other kinds in the shop.

But first, here’s the picture:

Lyalvale Express Supreme Game 16g / #6

My purchase of the Lyalvale cartridge is probably the most irrational of the four cartridges I’ve acquired today. On paper, it is unlikely to produce the usable 40-yard pattern I seek (presumably containing only around 150, over-large pellets to start with) and I would be extremely surprised if the reality is any different. A fibre wad is also likely to prove detrimental.

The cartridge therefore holds only one point of interest for me: it is the one of the two lightest 3″ loadings commercially available (along with the still-elusive Gamebore 16g load) and I will pattern it purely to see whether a reduction in shot charge produces any noticeable improvement in performance (obviously remembering that there are many other factors that will also influence the pattern test results).

Fiocchi Magnum 19g / #7½ (Italian) & 18g / #6 (Italian)

My research into the extraction of best possible performance from my new .410 is not, of course, done in isolation. Opinion on the major UK shooting forums, both past and present, has always been that the Fiocchi “Magnum” loading is the “go-to” loading for people serious about hunting with a .410.

Although I had never attempted wingshooting with a .410 until the arrival of the Yildiz, I found the 19g/#7½ load to be an excellent clay-buster with my previous .410 – back in the days where I still could afford to spend £50 on a morning’s entertainment! I always recall, however, that it was a little sharper on the shoulder than I’d generally prefer in a small gauge gun.

It’s not so much that I mind recoil – my 12 gauge doesn’t come out of the cabinet for less than a 39g cartridge, which I find surprisingly manageable – but more that if one is going to use a lighter load, one expects consummately less recoil with it. In defense of the cartridge, however, the sharpness of the kick may have something to do with the facts that the gun fitted poorly and – if memory serves – weighed less than 5lbs.

I digress. The #7½ (an English #7) version of the Fiocchi cartridge should give in the region of 225 pellets to play with and, whilst I haven’t had the chance to open one to look at the contents yet, I’m told has a full-length plastic wad, which should be a boon to performance as it’ll protect the shot from deformation against the barrel wall to some extent. I am greatly hopeful that this will be “the one”.

The #6 version of the Fiocchi cartridge is also labelled “2.7mm”, which is an English #5½ – a somewhat unusual shot size by anyone’s standard – which should give in the region of 155-160 pellets in the cartridge. It is just as unlikely as the Lyalvale cartridge, I would expect, to produce the 40-yard pattern I am looking for. However, it is widely employed for bird hunting by of serious .410 hunters and comes highly recommended by several persons whose experience I trust enough to make it worth testing.

Apart from anything else, larger pellets (i.e. #5½) should fly truer, all other things being equal, since they are proportionately less deformed by impacts with barrel, other pellets and choke. Although I believe my understanding of the behaviour of shotguns to be deep and broadly correct, I am concerned that my belief that the use of larger shot (i.e. size #6 and larger) in the smaller bores damages performance does not become a prejudice and in so doing, arbitrarily exclude a range of potentially useful cartridges. I must therefore take measurements and prove that an obvious dearth of pellets in the cartridge will lead to insufficient pattern density at range – hence, buying the #5½s on the basis of others’ recommendations.

Eley Extra Long (Subsonic) 18g / #6

Why, oh why, I hear you ask, would I apparently ignore the experience I have already gained with the Eley Extra Long cartridge in its supersonic #7 flavour and buy another box of cartridges of the same construction which contain fewer pellets and expect them to produce better patterns?

Well, dear reader, I’ll admit it: I don’t really expect this version of the Eley cartridge to offer better performance than the previously tested loading, but there is a method in my apparent madness – or at least a handful of things that make me think that this is a cartridge worth testing.

You’ll note from the subtitle that this is the subsonic version of the “Extra Long” cartridge. Yes, it’ll have a rolled turnover rather than a crimp. Yes, it will contain a thin fibre wad that offers barely any cushioning of the pellets under acceleration. Yes, most of the pellets will get scraped up the barrel as the cartridge is fired.

What’s also true, however, is that those pellets will be accelerated more slowly, to a velocity 400fps lower than the supersonic version of the cartridge. Yes, fewer of them will be cold-welded and damaged under that acceleration. Yes, they’ll scrub the barrel walls 25% less quickly. Yes, they’ll hit the choke 25% less hard. Yes, they won’t experience the turbulence of acceleration through the trans-sonic region and back again.

It is for these reasons that, by all accounts, subsonic cartridges tend to produce far superior pattern performance to an identical load accelerated to supersonic velocity. There is little concrete information to go on, but the best source I have suggests that in most cases, improvements of 10-20% pattern density can be achieved simply by lowering the muzzle velocity of a cartridge to below the speed of sound. Twice that degree of improvement is apparently not unheard of.

Now it may be the case that even a 20% improvement in performance will not get these Eley cartridges to produce a usable 40-yard pattern. Given that the shot size is #6, I’d need them to produce a genuine full-choke performance of 68-70% to achieve what I’d consider to be the minimum acceptable pattern density (120 pellets in the standard circle) at 40 yards. No cartridge I’ve tested thus far has even approached that kind of performance.

Furthermore, on the basis of my own experience, I’d prefer at least 140 pellets in the standard circle, which represents an 80% performance for this cartridge: I’m not convinced that kind of performance is achievable on a consistent basis in a .410, even with a subsonic loading. However, I am interested enough in the possibility that I will test these cartridges, if only to have some real-world data to fall back on when I next need to argue for or against (as the case may be) the use of subsonics.

I took a trip to North Cambridgeshire yesterday to see a friend who had agreed to assist me with patterning the .410. The weather was foul for the duration – driving rain made it too difficult and uncomfortable to shoot all of the patterns I had hoped to “bag” and by the time we’d finished, the (cardboard) plates were coming back to the car soaked, in spite of the fact that they’d been out less than a minute each. Nonetheless, with some degree of exercise running the 30 or 40 yards from firing point to target, we were able to get some useful information about how the gun was performing, although the exercise may have raised more questions than it answered.

In the event, we had two new cartridges to test, the Bornaghi “Extreme” containing 14g of what was labelled as #7½ shot – in English currency, a #7 – and the 3″ version of the Eley “Trap” cartridge which has been released to market relatively recently and continues to receive generally good reviews from those who are able to get hold of them.

Bornaghi Extreme 14g / #7½ (Italian)

I crossed my fingers in the hope of seeing good things from the Bornaghi cartridge. The Italian makers, and Bornaghi in particular, have a reputation amongst the folk whose opinions I respect as being the best designers / manufacturers of small bore shotgun ammunition and this raises expectations. Furthermore, as the first 2½” cartridge I’ve tested in the gun, it represents what I might call my romantic ideal of what the perfect .410 cartridge should be.

In comparison to the modern “magnum” 3″ loads commonly employed, most of which contain 18g, 19g or even 21g of shot, the Bornaghi cartridge has a charge of only 14g, which seems a rather more sensible quantity, given that the traditional 28 gauge load is 21g and – let’s face it – there’s little point in stuffing a 28-gauge load into a .410 case if one already has a 28-gauge available for use. This is one of the major reasons I continue to hope to be able to get hold of the 3″/16g load that Gamebore produce: technical considerations notwithstanding, the lighter payload just seems to be slightly more suited to the bore size.

The Bornaghi cartridges contained an average of 171 pellets. They contained a short plastic wad with long skirt, but a short cup. The wad was essentially the same shape as a child’s diabolo toy and the skirt / cup apparently equal in length. This suggests that the vast majority of the pellets are in contact with the bore as the shot column proceeds up the barrel. They are crimped with a 6-point star closure.

The results of the pattern tests, though they were few, seem to suggest that a full choke does not give the best performance with this cartridge. In fact no single test produced a pattern which would even meet the standard of an idealized cylinder choke – the best pattern in absolute terms, of 51% (91 pellets in the circle) at 30 yards with the ¾ choke is probably not effective at 25 yards (and may not be so at 20 yd.). Arguably, what was theoretically the best pattern of 35% (60 pellets in the circle) at 40 yards, (which implies a performance of perhaps 55% at 30 yards) is still both insufficient, and – coming from the half choke rather than the full – suggests that excessive constriction may be an issue here.

Although some of the patterns shot here looked promising at the time they were shot, subsequent analysis gives little to hope for – the cartridges are, in short, a disappointment.

Eley Trap 19g / #7½

I begin by observing that it is not my usual practice to employ shot as small as #7½ (2.3mm) on live quarry. However, in the .410, where ranges are ordinarily constrained by the gun and cartridge rather than the shooter, it appears from anecdotal evidence to be possible to successfully hunt small to medium game with this shot size. As yet, I have never attempted it myself, but if the Eley cartridge under test (or any other loaded with #7½) shows significant promise, pattern-wise, I may attempt it.

The Eley cartridges contain an average of 274 pellets. They are loaded with a plastic wad with a long skirt, the fins of which reach approximately half way up the shot column, which suggests that although obturation should be excellent, many of the pellets will be in contact with the barrel wall during their journey down the bore. They are crimped with a 6-point star closure.

Since it had become quickly apparent during the testing of the Bornaghi cartridge that the ½ (3 notches) and looser (4 & 5 notches) chokes were unlikely to give the performance desired and the rainfall was becoming heavier and more insistent, we the gun was left with the ¾ and Full chokes in it to test the Eley cartridge. In the event, we employed the full-choke barrel exclusively, before the weather forced us to abandon the experiment.

The results of the pattern tests are somewhat curious. At 30 yards, the Eleys put 175 and 179 pellets into the 30″ circle, which represent percentage performances of 64% and 65%, respectively. This is roughly equivalent to an idealized skeet choke performance – not the behavior one might expect from a full-choked gun – although it still represents a very usable pattern with plenty of pellets to spare above the 120-140 pellet minimum requirement. So far, so reasonable.

At 40 yards, however, the pellet counts dropped to 72 and 88 respectively, representing 26% and 32% performance respectively or, in simple terms, worse than you’d expect from a cylinder choking. I am tempted to test the cylinder choke, to see if the performance is any better, or still worse! Either way, these patterns are obviously insufficiently dense for hunting purposes.

Clearly, the gun is producing a lot of “fliers”, which suggests either that the pellets are suffering significant deformation from being in contact with the barrel wall or possibly that the choke is too tight. At this point, there is not enough breadth of evidence available to make a determination either way, although the relationship of the ¾-choke result to the others shown during testing of the Bornaghi cartridge does hint that this may be a blown pattern.

If we interpolate linearly those figures for a distance of 35 yards (an approximation not quite appropriate, but given other uncontrollable factors, near enough for our purposes), we end up with an estimated average pellet count of 137 in the 30″ circle, which would again be usable. This appears to be an improvement on the Eley “Extralong” cartridge, which became unusable before the shot had reached 30 yards.

Analysis

Although I have not quoted every pattern test result obtained, the above represents a faithful summary of the significant results and, I believe, paints a picture of the overall behavior of the gun with the cartridges under test.

Initially, the Bornaghi cartridge appears to show particularly poor performance and offer no hope as a hunting cartridge. Whilst this may be the case, I believe that testing it may have demonstrated that my initial suspicion that the best pattern performance would not be achieved with the tightest choke in the .410. Of course – the absence of ¾ choke pattern test result with the Eley cartridge prevents me from stating this as a firm conclusion, but there is a clear improvement in performance with the Bornaghi as constriction increases to the ¾ choke, followed by a degradation with the full choke. For this reason, I believe the next test I should attempt is to pattern the Eley cartridge with the ¾ choke and see if the patterns are superior to the performance demonstrated with the full choke during these tests.

Apart from its poor performance and possible demonstration of a blown pattern effect, the Bornaghi cartridge appears to indicate that there may be a genuine utility in the use of a 2½” cartridge loaded with English #7½ shot and – unlike the English manufacturers – offers the possibility of testing that performance. It appears to be possible to obtain the cartridge in an Italian #8 shot – equivalent to an English #7½ – and this would, if the figures above are repeated, give a usable range of around 30 yards. This obviously does not satisfy the aim of finding a 40-yard cartridge, but with notably light recoil and acceptable performance it may be a way of carving out a niche for the .410 (as opposed to the 28 gauge) and constraining my shooting sufficiently to stop me taking the silly 60+ yard shots to which I’ve been prone.

The Eley cartridge shows more promise. I am keen to experiment further to see if the ½ and ¾ chokes give inferior performance as the constrictions / labeling would suggest or whether maybe – just maybe – the full choke was “blowing” the patterns of this cartridge too and the looser chokes will actually provide the 35-40 yard performance I seek. If this turned out to be the case, I suspect I could live with the smaller-than-desirable shot size and heavier-than-desirable payload, at least until the cartridge proved itself on live game a poorer balance of shot size and pattern density than anecdotal evidence suggests.

The general conclusions to be drawn from the pattern testing appear to be twofold. First, the pattern of a cartridge is significantly improved by keeping the pellets out of contact with the barrel wall. To date, the only cartridge with “wings” in the wad to protect the shot from contact with the barrel has provided significantly better performance (at 30 yards) than any other cartridge tested. It seems desirable therefore to find a cartridge which has a full-length wad, which can protect the whole column from scraping against the barrel wall. Perhaps such a cartridge may yet make itself apparent.

Whilst my intention is still to obtain a box of the Gamebore 16g cartridge and pattern them, I recall the Fiocchi F410 cartridge I used with my last .410 and remember that this is a 19g cartridge loaded with Italian #7½ shot (an English #7) with a wad that covered most of the length of the shot column. This may be a cartridge worth testing if I can obtain a box.

The second conclusion which can be drawn appears to be that the .410 is much more sensitive to what I’ve described as “secondary effects” elsewhere than I had remembered. It is looking increasingly likely that I will be unable to find any cartridge loaded with #7 shot that will put enough pellets in the circle to make it usable at 40 yards, and that #7½ shot may be the only reasonable option. It seems that the standard performances of Cylinder, Improved Cylinder, Modified, etc. equating to 40%, 50%, 60% performance simply do not apply in this gun and possibly do not apply in the .410 bore size at all.

Further patterns will be shot at a date to be determined and you, dear reader, will be the first to hear about them when it happens.