Category: 9mm Bore

I think November is probably my least favourite month of the year. Almost everything about it is an inconvenience.

Take, for example, the sunshine: usually I very much like sunshine and I particularly like being outdoors in it, but November sunshine is the worst of all of the kinds of sunshine. The sun hangs so low in the sky that, even when it’s a nice day (especially when it’s a nice day), it’s oppressive. One cannot look into the sky because there is the blinding sunshine, creeping just under the brow and into the eyes. A peaked cap will make no difference – there is not enough distance between where one wants to look and where the sun sits to be comfortable. One is therefore obliged to be blinded by the impression of the sun, burned repeatedly into the retina, or to stare at the ground to avoid the very same – and no-one goes into the countryside, with or without a gun, to spend an afternoon looking at the floor, do they?

It is not just the light of the sun, however. Its very warmth is most inconvenient in November, above all other months. It is too cold to persist in wearing shorts and T-shirt for reasonable periods in exposed farmland, so out come the trousers and jacket, still unwashed from last year. Two hours in November sunshine however and the jacket cannot be discarded fast enough when one returns to one’s vehicle, sopping wet from perspiration and wishing that it were either much warmer, or much colder, but not this!

The list goes on. Driving is more dangerous when one cannot see properly through blinding sunshine. Shooting is near impossible when the spots – impressions of the sun – burned onto the retina cause every bird to disappear into a green-blue haze just as one focuses upon it.

As if to emphasize the arrival of my least favourite time of year (and don’t mistake me – December and January are two of my favourite months, provided they’re properly cold) the peewits and golden plover, those harbingers of doom – all 386,729,448 of them – have arrived on the farms and, as appears to be customary, scared all of the wood pigeons away. They milled around impressively whilst I walked the boundaries of the second farm I visited today and practically dive-bombed me at times, whereas, with one exception, I didn’t see a single pigeon within 100 yards.

The trouble is this: when, every time one sees a bird (i.e. a wood pigeon) and then pauses, stock still, to see if it will approach or fly anywhere in range, discovers it will not and ends by congratulating oneself on exercising a pleasing degree of restraint by not letting the shootbangstick get overexcited, it’s catching. Do it enough times and then, when a bird actually in long-but-shootable range pops out of the hedgerow in front, one simply ends up staring at it, wide-eyed and a bit “gah-gah”, wondering whether it really is close enough to have a go at and… oh – it’s gone…

One miss at a distant bird followed – well I wasn’t going to make that mistake again, was I? – allowing me to add one of the Gamebore Regal Game cases to my 16-gauge collection, but I returned home with nothing to show for the trip, except a peculiar weariness.

I blame the sunshine myself. It makes everything look shiny and strange and gives a peculiar sense of “distance from the world”, which I find very unpleasant. Did I mention that November was my least favourite month?

No patterning today. We do occasionally get deliveries on Sunday now, about which I’m rather pleased (the shops have discovered that people actually like to have new things every day of the week and will pay for the privilege – if only the NHS could discover the same about people getting ill at weekends…) but the patterning paper didn’t turn up either way. There’s a huge number of cartridges stacked up on my shelf now and I need to get through testing them, but how much of that gets done before the weather closes in on us remains to be seen.

Trusting My Instincts

A final thought: I should have trusted my instincts. In writing up various pattern and performance tests for the 9mm gun recently, I entertained the idea that the #6 (Italian) cartridge might perhaps have some utility. Looking back at the patterns, I think my initial gut instinct was correct: if #6 and #5 are too large for the .410, then they are certainly too large for the 9mm. It may simply be that the gun is incapable killing any UK quarry humanely, but if it is, the shot size has to be smaller. Energetics aside, you still have to hit the target with one or more pellets and the number of “gaps” showing up in those 9mm patterns – even the good ones – is pretty shocking.

Looking back on recent posts on this blog, it’s clear that, only a couple of weeks ago, I wasn’t having the best time of it. Happily, regression to the mean is one of the few “rules” in life that one can rely on and I’m pleased to report another good outing today, to go with the positive trip I had last weekend.

I traveled today to see an old friend and was pleased to find him looking well (particularly given a recent illness). We instigated another meeting of the Cardboard Perforation Society (CPS) on some of his ground and pattern tested the Fiocchi #7½ 9mm Flobert cartridge which has been sitting on the shelf for some time. This was a rather amusing exercise which saw us shooting patterns at 5, 10, 15 and 20 yards and in the foremost case prompted many amusing jibes on the subject of accuracy: the muzzle of the gun was practically touching the pattern plate.

To give a conclusion in a sentence: whilst concerns about the penetrative ability of small shot at low velocity remain, the Fiocchi shells do appear to offer some utility in short-range vermin control. In fact, the #7½ cartridge may be the best of the 9mm shells we’ve tested – proper results will follow later.

We performed these tests using some packing boxes I found at work, left over from a recent office move. These were stacked, awaiting disposal, so my employer was only too happy to let me cut them up and take them away. They produced fifteen or so plates of various sizes which will keep me going whilst I await the delivery – tomorrow apparently – of the next roll of patterning paper, with which I’ll do the pattern testing for the increasingly large pile of .410 cartridges sitting on my “man shelf”.

In fact managed to return home with another box to add to the .410 mountain, in the form of the Gamebore “Traditional Game” 9g / #7 (2″)  cartridge (the link displays the re-branded version) of which I have until now – in spite of having visited the Gamebore website reasonably regularly for some years – been entirely unaware.

A Wander

It was probably selfish of me to observe to my friend after we’d finished patterning, that taking leave from work and not going shooting (as opposed to patterning) always feels a bit of a waste of a day off. Selfish, in the sense that one shouldn’t invite oneself to others’ domains and simply expect to be allowed to shoot – one must be invited to do so, of course.

Nonetheless, I think my friend understood the point I was trying to make (i.e. that free time should be used for the things that give most enjoyment) and kindly agreed that we should go for a wander around the woods not far from where we’d done the patterning. The sun blazed and the sky was clear in a manner entirely uncharacteristic of any 27th October I can remember and we both enjoyed the walk very much.

In the end, one juvenile wood pigeon fell to a 15-20 yard shot from my Baikal 12-gauge, with another easy attempt prevented by the safety catch earlier on. (I forget, every time I take that gun out, that it has an automatic safety – I may have to “fix” that at some point.) The stock extension appeared to improve the fit of the gun and if anything, I felt as if I’d shot marginally over the top of the bird, rather than underneath, which suggests a slight over-correction. I’ll take it out again a few more times in the next few weeks to be sure.

The only other shot I took was at a bird further out, which I think I hit, albeit perhaps only with a single stray pellet. It continued on for at least another 200-300 yards before dropping to the ground, but whether it was landing normally or falling because it had expired, I couldn’t tell. The foxes will have had it by now if it was the latter.

Nonetheless: one in the bag – in spite of my confidence in the 34g/#5 reload being somewhat dented by some rather poor patterns shot only minutes earlier. I’m going to have to rethink that cartridge – it’s not consistent, or obviously performant enough for me to be happy with it, or have confidence in it, whether or not it’s printing 140 at 40 yards. (Again, results to follow.)

After we’d packed the guns away, we drove out towards one of the local RFD’s and stopped at the pub, where I was grateful to be treated to a very nice lunch.

What do you mean, #7?

I promise readers that I’m not going to be any less cynical on the subject of shot sizes in the small bores and when we visited the local firearms dealer just after lunch, it was certainly the case that, for .410, all the cartridges on the shelf, except for the aforementioned Gamebore loading, contained #6 shot or larger.

I was tempted to buy more of the Hull “High Pheasant” 19g/#6 loading and a box of the RWS 9mm shells containing 7g/#10, but I can obtain the former locally and the latter were phenomenally expensive for a cartridge for which I have no use and which I’ve previously tested – no matter how appropriate the tiny shot size might be to the tiny Flobert case. I was also tempted to buy a box of the Gamebore buckshot load (which I’ve known about for as long as I can remember, but never seen for sale), simply for interest, but decided against it, not only because I’d have no use for them, but also because they would probably blow to bits the pattern plate and render rolls of expensive paper useless should stray pellet travel through the box.

In the end, however, I was pleased to come away with something new to test and, although the Gamebore shell is probably a 20-yard cartridge at best, it might yet turn out to be a good 20-yard cartridge, with all of the usual accommodations one has to make for a 2″ cartridge assumed. I suspect that my inherent curiosity regarding such extreme loadings may see it jump a few places up the queue and feature in my next set of testing.

After that and another pleasant drive through the country, I dropped my friend back at his house and we parted ways. A slow journey back and the responsibilities of fatherhood kept me busy for a few hours after I got back, but I’m now “in the zone” and will get on with counting some patterns as soon as I’ve hit the button to publish this post.

More to follow.