Category: .410 Bore

This post was originally intended to be the one which will now follow it in the next day or two.

I had been planning to write about the use of very small shot and looser chokes in the .410 and explore the utility – if any – of such combinations, but I now want to to note some new acquisitions made this morning and talk about those a little. Doing so will still segue nicely into the originally-planned post, I believe.

2″ Cartridges

Subsequent to mentioning my discovery of the 2″ Lyalvale 9g /#9 cartridge and description of it here as an historical curiosity, I contacted the Lyalvale marketing department to discover whether the loading is indeed available.

Lyalvale’s marketing manager responded very quickly to say that it was and, after a few exchanges, suggested that there was an RFD reasonably close-by from whom I might be able to obtain a box.

I drove over to the dealer this morning. In the event, they didn’t have the #9 version of the cartridge, but I did spot a box of the 9g / #6 loading, about which I trust, dear reader, I have never been complimentary.

So why did I leave the shop having paid for a box of what I know to be useless cartridges?

Simple. I intend to prove, via pattern testing, that my extreme prejudice against such an unbalanced load is justified and that nobody in possession of a .410 with 2½” or 3″ chamber(s) should consider using these shells where any alternative is available.

Oh – and if you hadn’t guessed, I’m a bit of a cartridge anorak and I’ve never actually owned any 2″ shells before, so of course I had to buy some.

Here they are:

Readers will note that there are two boxes of the Eley “Trap” cartridges displayed in that picture. The reason for this is that I was also able to acquire, unexpectedly, a box of the 14g / #7½ loading that I’d been unable to buy locally on Thursday: an excellent result for a round trip of not much more than 1½ hours.

I look forward to pattern testing all of them and will continue to search for the 9g / #9 load as described previously.

Prompted by a “colleague” in the shooting fraternity, I was just looking at the new Lyalvale Express website and discovered something rather interesting.

I now wonder if the ground is starting to shift as far as appropriate shot sizes for the .410 goes. It was the usual story: #6, #6, #6, #6, #5, #7, #6…. #9.

Pardon!?

Well – perhaps it wasn’t entirely a surprise, since I already knew that Lyalvale have for a long time produced a 2½” .410 cartridge containing ½oz of #9 shot. I used it to shoot some clays, back in the days when I owned the Baikal single I’ve written about elsewhere. I have also known that Fiocchi – in spite of the apparent difficulty of obtaining them – produce a 9g load in a 2″ case in a wide range of Italian shot sizes from #10-#4 (#4!!! – Ed.).

What I didn’t know, is that Lyalvale also apparently offer a 2″ cartridge loaded with #9 shot in their older .410 range, which is – if my inference from the pictures shown here is correct  – apparently soon to be re-branded as “Supreme Game” as most of the rest of their range has been.

This seems to be an eminently sensible choice and – although I have been observing the cartridge market for some time now – this is the first time I’ve heard of this particular loading.

Kudos Lyalvale.

Of course, this isn’t going to be the .410 hunting cartridge of the century. I’ve never shot #9 at anything living and I don’t plan to, but I have it on good authority that American #9 shot will do for small vermin (rats, etc.) at 20 yards (or 25 yards at a push) and there’s not much difference between that and a UK #9 pellet.

Of course, performance isn’t going to be amazing. With such tiny pellets, easily deformed, the best one could probably hope for is probably a nominal Improved Cylinder performance (and I would think it would probably fall far short of that), but if it were achievable, you might get something that looks like this (computer-generated) pattern:

It might do for rats.

At this point, I’m having trouble finding any corroboratory evidence – i.e. from suppliers – that this is a real offering and isn’t just a typo, but assuming it isn’t, it returns the .410 to it’s roots as an ultra-short range small pest / vermin gun.

I doubt they’ll be loaded with black powder, but I’ll see if I can get hold of some nonetheless.

I came home this afternoon to discover a large number of my discarded pattern plates spread out across the floor of our lounge, with my boy on top of them, painting his latest creation – a car, apparently. My wife seemed very pleased with herself and mentioned something along the lines of “if you’re going to pay £13 for expensive paper only to shoot at it, we might as well get some more use out of it before you throw it away”.

Kudos to her.

Before they all got covered in paint, I took a few more photographs of some of the old .410 patterns, which I’ve added to the relevant pattern test pages for reference. I’ve also got a picture of probably the worst pattern (I use the word advisedly) I’ve shot so far, which doesn’t justify inclusion on those pages but which I post here for comparison for anyone who’s interested. This is the (hopefully anomalous) Fiocchi “Magnum” at 40 yards, through a ½ choke:

I visited three farms today and mooched around for several hours over lunchtime, shooting a mediocre two-for-six with the 28 gauge I was carrying.

I encountered one of my acquaintance at the last farm, who was having a particularly poor day and tried to encourage him to make the best of it and the glorious weather. He showed me a handful of the new(-ish) Gamebore “Pigeon Extreme” cartridges containing 34g / #5 and complained that he couldn’t use them because they had plastic wads in them – our landowner specifies “fibre only”. I held my tongue when he further complained that the alternative – Hull “High Pheasant”, of which loading I’m not sure – were “useless” and that he couldn’t hit anything with them, but he did demonstrate five or six times as I passed the time of day with him in his hide, that that was indeed the case.

Given the symptoms he described – new gun (to him), old-school semi-automatic, pattern under the bead – I suggested, with quite a degree of vagueness (because I wasn’t sure myself), that the gun might have a comb that was too low for him and to consider a cheek pad, which he said he’d investigate. I decided to leave him to it, when, having missed another decoying bird with all three shots, I then downed it cleanly with a single round of ¾oz / #7 at longer range and made myself somewhat unpopular.

Anecdotes aside, I did manage to locate and prepare a cardboard box for pattern testing last night, so along with the 28 gauge, I put the .410 in the car this morning with the new box of Eley “Fourlong” that I picked up this week.

I only had enough cardboard for two, indicative patterns, but as a result of those, I am extremely impressed with the Eley 2½” cartridge.

20-yard patterns, as I’ve said previously, tell one relatively little, although this was as expected, putting 144 (97%) of the 148 pellets in the cartridge into the standard circle.

The 30-yard pattern however, was significantly better than I expected, placing 106 pellets into the standard circle. I’ve also said in the First Impressions page for the cartridge, this matches the best performance demonstrated by the (3″) Lyalvale 16g cartridge (though admittedly that cartridge is loaded with #6) and is in the same ballpark as the performance demonstrated by the 19g Fiocchi cartridge loaded with the same shot size (#7½ Italian = #7 English). The latter contains 50% more shot, but produces essentially no better performance at 30 yards – would you believe it!?

Perhaps there is something in this idea that 2½” .410 cartridges can match the performance of the 3″ shells with their long, long shot columns and various other ballistic disadvantages… We shall see.

Put it this way: I’m even more keen now than I was, in light of today’s results, to obtain some of the 2½” version of the Eley “Trap” cartridge, containing 14g / #7½.

Everything in time.

In spite of there being a reasonable quantity of data to analyze, the conclusions to be drawn from Monday’s pattern testing trip are quite straightforward. The 30-yard patterns which I had not counted when I posted on Monday night proved largely to be confirmatory of my working conclusions. The Fiocchi cartridges probably do not deserve the reputation they have for excellence, failing consistently to outperform all 3″ loadings thus far tested by the team at SmallBoreShotguns, with the exception of the Lyalvale Supreme Game 16g / #6 cartridge.

The #6 (Italian) loading of the “Magnum” cartridge is easily dealt with. Patterns produced by the cartridge are sufficiently dense at 20 yards to deal with almost any winged or ground game, perhaps excluding fox, but the likelihood of getting that close to any quarry without first having trapped or surprised it is small – at least when walking the hedgerows. Beyond 22-23 yards, the bare minimum threshold of 120 pellets in the standard circle will not be achieved by any choking. It was clear both in theory and from the very first pattern shot at 30 yards that the 2.7mm shot size is simply too big to be effectively used in a .410. Whilst allowing for the remote possibility that future pattern tests with lighter chokes reveal unexpected and incredible performance, it is reasonably safe to say that this loading is too unbalanced, too limiting and likely to be of very little value in a .410 where any alternative containing smaller shot is available.

Contrary to the above, it was reasonable to hope that the #7½ (Italian) loading – equivalent to a UK size #7 – of the Fiocchi cartridge would produce 40-yard performance and turn out to be the optimum cartridge for the little Yildiz. Unfortunately, it too was a disappointment. Whilst I can’t complain about the consistency of the cartridge – the pellet counts for a given choke and range varied surprisingly little across all of the data – it simply does not deliver the number of pellets required, at the range required, to be a contender in the search for the best possible load for this gun.

Whilst the remaining #6 (Italian) cartridges are likely to be put away at the back of a cupboard in a bag labelled “random shells”, for eventual use at a clay ground, where I’ll have fun whether or not I hit anything with them, I will return to the #7½ (Italian) shells later, when my stock of patterning paper is replenished. As I wrote in the performance analysis section of the extended pattern test page, it will be worth attempting the use of lighter (and perhaps tighter) chokes with this cartridge to rule out the possibility of an “island of performance”.

In the end, although I don’t have a reliably supply of the Eley “Trap” cartridges yet, I can obtain the better-performing Eley “Extralong” cartridges – both standard and subsonic – reasonably straightforwardly. This relegates the Fiocchi cartridges to fourth- and fifth-choice at best: I’ll have to really struggle to obtain ammunition before I resort to using them in the field.

Supplementary Patterns

The supplementary patterns shot on Monday also provided some useful data.

Eley “Trap” 19g / #7½

Although I remain a sceptic rather than an optimist regarding the effective range of #7½ shot and am still wary about using it for 35+ yard shots, it is undeniably effective at 30 yards on small-to-medium game. The single, 30-yard Eley “Trap” pattern I shot through the ¾ choke of the Yildiz on Monday is therefore an extremely pleasing and confidence-boosting result, with the 213 pellets in the standard circle more than adequate for the taking of birds and – I suspect – rabbits at sub-30-yard ranges.

The extra 40-yard patterns shot for the “Trap” cartridge, when combined with previously obtained data, establish an average of 125 pellets in the standard circle for that cartridge through the Yildiz’s ¾ choke. This confirms my previous assertion of pattern sufficiency for that combination; whether the pellets remain energetic enough at that range to cleanly bring down the birds can only be shown by further experience. Unfortunately, I have exhausted my stock of those cartridges, but I am seeking to obtain more.

Eley “Extralong” 18g / #7

Although it is not possible, on the basis of the combined data, to argue that the Eley “Extralong” cartridge is 40-yard-capable, we can make a more accurate judgement as to the maximum usable range of the cartridge in light of the patterns shot using the ¾ choke of the Yildiz on Monday. At 30-yards, the “Extralong” is more than adequate when shot through a 0.020″ constriction, printing 150-170 pellets in the standard circle at 30 yards. If we assume that this is the most performant choking (the “full” choke for the gun has been shown consistently to be over-tight and to blow patterns), then the maximum effective range of these cartridges is in the 32-33 yard range if one requires 140 pellets in the standard circle, or perhaps as far as 34-35 yards if one requires only 120. Energetically, they should be capable at this range.

The 20-yard patterns shot on Monday require no further comment.