Category: The Small Bores

I received a somewhat unexpected telephone call at around 5pm this evening.

The firearms enquiry officer dealing with my SGC renewal called this evening, in haste, to conduct the via telephone, the interview he’d clearly intended to do earlier but, due to “system and staff changes” hadn’t so far managed. This blindsided me somewhat, as – being a lazy Sunday evening – I’d just finished a pint of rather strong cider – safely, I thought – and although in the process of turning my thoughts to dinner, hadn’t managed to eat anything before being put on the spot!

I felt rather tipsy, if the truth be told, but I believe I answered all of the questions to his satisfaction and was told that my certificate would be issued tomorrow. Whether it will be hand delivered or simply posted, I don’t know, but it won’t be long before I’m back out, testing, patterning, hunting.

The whole situation has been – undeniably – an inconvenience, but everyone I have thus far spoken to from the constabulary’s firearms team has been both apologetic and apparently embarrassed at what appears to have either been excessive workload or an oversight (or both). Given that they themselves have admitted I put my application in with plenty of time to spare, I can’t give them a shining review, but I will say this: dealing with a customer’s problems in a pro-active and helpful way goes a long way to repairing any ill feeling caused by the initial mistake and I actually feel I’ve received good service from them, even if everything didn’t quite go to plan.

Game Supper

I’m cooking venison burgers for my wife and her friend tomorrow. It was going to be pigeon burgers, but my wife was concerned that feeding her “fitness guru” friend birds containing lead shot might not fly (the lead, rather than the pigeon being the problem).

For that reason, I suggested that we might eat some of the muntjac I dispatched with the .410 before Christmas – the theory being that bouncing it off a car (I didn’t do that bit, if you recall) and head-shooting it (that was me) was less likely to have introduced lead pellets to the parts I have just ground to be turned into burgers tomorrow.

With all that going on, I couldn’t miss the opportunity for a little taste test. I put one of the tenderloins aside before I started, then rubbed it with plenty of salt and pepper and fried it when I finished. It was delicious. It almost makes me want to take up deer stalking again. Almost.

Although I said in my first post after returning from last weekend’s patterning trip that I hadn’t managed to shoot all the patterns I wanted to, I did make substantial progress this week. I’m certainly going to have to find some more cartridges to test, given that the list of patterns left to shoot with the shells I have is beginning to get quite short.

At this point, all the patterns are counted and all of the data is collated and I’ve confirmed – if not actually learned – one or two things about each of the cartridges tested. It feels like it’s been a huge effort – perhaps it has, or perhaps I’m just tired – and I’m ready for a break once again. Hunting tomorrow evening will not involve the use of a pattern plate!

Currently, I’m not happy with some of the analysis I’ve written about the cartridges. Apart from anything else, I feel I’ve been lazy as far as the technical side of the analysis goes, so I’ll be re-visiting what I’ve written this week at some point very soon to distil the useful information from the sundry words and add the more specific technical analysis which has been a feature of my previous writing.

For those of you who don’t have time to read each of the analyses in turn, here’s a summary of what I’ve covered this week.

Bornaghi “Extreme”

My opinion of the Bornaghi cartridge was moderately improved by further testing, but the cartridge remains well away from being one with which I would choose to hunt. Better-performing alternatives are more-readily available and cheaper to acquire. I had always thought of Bornaghi as producing top-quality cartridges (and the components may be well-chosen and of high quality) but at the end of the day, performance is king and the 14g shell just doesn’t make the grade. I do continue to appreciate the level of detail that Bornaghi print on the cartridge case – in case one were in any doubt about the shell’s contents and capabilities.

Lyalvale “Supreme Game” 9g/#6

I like the idea of a 2″ cartridge – it is a pleasingly-unusual historic curiosity but nonetheless appropriate to the .410 given the origins of the gauge. I remain interested in obtaining and patterning Lyalvale’s alternative 9g loading containing #9 shot and investigating its behaviour.

As much as it would be nice to find a reason to keep a box or two of the Lyalvale cartridges “in stock”, they are not, a practical cartridge for hunting, particularly in a 3″-chambered .410 where the performance issues created by firing short cartridges in long chambers are clear from the data. If I were a more talented shot, I might justify using a handful of them whilst decoying (the shot size is more than sufficient), but they aren’t “general purpose”. Testing them has strongly suggested that a large “jump” between case and chamber-end has a significant and detrimental effect on performance.

Eley “Fourlong” 12½g/#7

For this round of pattern testing, the “Fourlong” cartridge is my personal “winner”. I don’t view subsonic or marginally-supersonic muzzle velocities as any kind of handicap and – on the basis that the long-term average pellet counts for the ¾-choke at 30 yards stays within the region of the 120 pellet mark – I think I’d use these cartridges more often if I was sure that ranges were going to be at 30 yards or under (e.g. decoying). Once again the wisdom of keeping muzzle velocities (and, one assumes, pressures) well below modern expectations is proved.

I’ve been impressed by Eley’s heavier loads (e.g. the 19g “Trap” cartridge) but there’s something about putting that much shot in a .410 that seems a little excessive. I remain hopeful that I will find a true 40-yard cartridge, but if I don’t, then doing 30 yards well with a genuinely light loading, rather than hoping for 40 yards on the basis of luck may be the more satisfying and appropriate option.

Eley “Trap” 14g/#9

Cartridges where one has such a genuine excess of pellets that the most concerning feature is how large one can make the pattern are few and far between. The nearest most folk get is with a cylinder-choked gun and a #9 cartridge on the skeet field, though the Italians go one better with their Dispersante cartridges which contain a device to further spread the pattern. Nonetheless, this is the case with the “Trap” cartridge and our theory that shooting many chokes at the same distance would give the most useful picture turned out, I believe, to be true. Whilst this series might usefully be supplemented by some 20- and 25-yard patterns in future, we established that pattern sufficiency is hardly an issue where #9 shot is used in the .410, but that it’s ability to kill the target remains very much in doubt.

Eley “Trap” 14g/#7½

The patterns shot with the #7½ version of the “Trap” cartridge confirmed that it is probably the best-balanced cartridge yet tested by the SmallBoreShotguns team. Conventional wisdom has it that #7½ shot probably runs out of “oomph” at around 30-35 yards and this coincides with the range at which the best patterns shot from this cartridge fall below the minimum required density. Whilst the heavier, 3″ version of this loading provides more pellets in the pattern, it doesn’t necessarily give any extra range, as its somewhat patchy performance on longer-range birds in the field has demonstrated.

Although perhaps contradicted by later results from tests of the 2″ Lyalvale cartridge, we could not deduce any negative effect on performance from this 2½” loading, compared with it’s 3″ sibling, in spite of the shot column of the former “jumping” from case mouth to the end of the chamber. In fact, the shorter cartridge gave marginally better performance – which is as yet unexplained.

What’s next?

As I said at the beginning of this post, I’m going to start looking around again for some more cartridges to test. This may take some time, but there are plenty more brands in the UK market which I need to find and obtain. In general terms, I believe the previous “priority list” is now reduced to the following:

• Gamebore “.410 Hunting” 16g / #7 [3″] (or any / all shot sizes available)
• Gamebore “.410 Target” (a.k.a. “Skeet”) 14g / #9 [2½″] (useless for hunting, but I have a point to prove / refute)
• Any 3″ cartridge not mentioned above containing #7 or #7½ shot.
• Any other 3″ cartridge.
• Lyalvale 2″ / 9g / #9.
• Any of the Lyalvale 14g [2½″] loads (including the #9).
• Any other 2½″ cartridge.
• Anything else.

Additionally, of the cartridges so far tested, there are many with which I’d like to do supplementary testing. It is not my expectation that shooting any of the following patterns will alter the conclusions I’ve drawn from the data collected so far, but they will help to provide a broader data set upon which to base general conclusions and future analysis.

• Bornaghi “Extreme” 14g/#7: 40-yard patterns with ¾-choke.
• Eley “Fourlong” 12½/#7: 30-yard patterns with other chokes.
• Eley “Extralong” 18g/#7: 20-yard pattern with half choke for completeness.
• Eley “Extralong” Subsonic: Full choke patterns for  to rule out the remote possibility of 40-yard performance; further patterns to sort out 30-yard results for 0.015″ / 0.020″ chokings.
• Eley “Trap” 14g/#9: 20-yard pattern with ½-choke with for completeness.
• Eley “Trap” 14g/#7½: 20-yard pattern with ½-choke with for completeness; cylinder, quarter and full choke patterns with to produce a complete data set.
• Eley “Trap” 19g/#7½: Cylinder and quarter patterns to complete data set.

Additionally, I would like to record confirmatory patterns to strengthen confidence in the existing data centered around the 0.015″ and 0.020″ chokes which have been most extensively tested and seem to be the most effective overall. Since the list above probably accounts for another 30 patterns and confirmatory testing the same again – without accommodating the testing of any new cartridges – it may be some time before they are all ready for analysis!

I don’t know if what I’m about to say constitutes a significant climb down from a position I’ve held for a long time, or whether this is simply a restatement of my opinion which allows for one or two edge cases but doesn’t change the fundamentals. The fact that I’m not yet sure suggests that I need longer to ponder the question and see where I end up after analyzing the data I’ve gleaned from last Sunday’s patterning session.

The the issue at hand can be expressed as a simple question:

Can a cartridge containing nine grams of number six shot be of any practical value to anyone?

My long-standing answer to that question has always been “absolutely not” but I’m forced at least to reconsider the answer in light of the data I’ve generated for the Lyalvale “Supreme Game” cartridge of the aforementioned specification.

In defense of my previous experience, I should mention that one has to accept a number of potentially-controversial assumptions to get to any other answer than “no”.

Breaking The Mould

It is simply impossible to adopt the methodology we’ve used elsewhere on this site to analyze the performance of the Lyalvale cartridge. Comparing the performance of the 2″ shell against a 120- or 140-pellet minimum standard (in a 30″ circle) is facile when the loading averages 102 pellets on in the case. Even if it produced rifle-like performance, it could never achieve what was asked of it.

This means that, to give any kind of commentary on the performance of the cartridge, we have to change the parameters of the experiment. Allowing for a much more accurate shooter, we can show that a smaller number of pellets in a smaller effective pattern area give pattern density equivalent to our 120-pellets-in-a-30″ circle standard. (Detailed discussion and the mathematics behind this will be shown on the extended pattern test page for the cartridge when our analysis is complete.)

We can therefore show that, provided the shooter can achieve more than twice the degree of accuracy required for the use of cartridges deemed to produce minimally-sufficient 30″ patterns, the use of the 9g / #6 loading on small-to-medium game may be acceptable at ranges as great as 30 yards!

Of course, many mere mortals cannot achieve anything like this standard of shooting!

Two-Inch Edge Cases

This isn’t the appropriate place for a detailed analysis of the Lyalvale cartridge’s performance (see the link above). However, the headline figure of 53 pellets falling into a 20″ circle at 30 yards gives an equivalent pattern density within that area of 119 pellets in a 30″ circle. If we consider the latter a “killing” pattern, then, if the quarry is covered by the former pattern, it should also be killed.

For most of us, this approach will be inhumane. Inhumane because our shooting skill is not sufficiently great; inhumane because we will most often have more appropriate tools available than a 2″-chambered .410. It is extremely difficult to find circumstances in which one would have to rely on this cartridge to the exclusion of anything else.

That said, for “rifle-type” shooting at targets which are still and very close to the shooter, the “Supreme Game” loading may be an appropriate cartridge. Provided ranges really are short and the quarry stationary, this cartridge will “do the business” so to speak – though for most such situations (e.g. rats in the yard) the alternative loading of this brand, containing 9g of #9 shot may still be a better choice.

Is that a climb-down? I’d like to think not and although the mathematics doesn’t lie, I still maintain that as a loading, 9g /#6 is of almost no use to almost anyone.

The creation of the first tranche of pattern data for the 2½” Eley “Trap” cartridge last weekend offers the possibility of a direct comparison between the behaviour of 2½” and 3″ cartridges which are essentially identical.

Allowing for the fact that differences in case capacity require either a different powder, or a different quantity of identical powder, the two versions of the “Trap” cartridge appear to be of common construction: there is no difference in wad, shot size, shot composition or crimp. We assume that the primers are also identical.

Thus, provided we compare the cartridges’ performance by percentage and not by absolute pellet counts, we can determine whether the simple fact of increasing the height of the shot column improves or degrades performance.

In fact, in the case of the Eley “Trap” brand, there is little difference.

The data collected at the time of writing gives a 42.5% average performance for the 2½” version of the cartridge fired through the 0.015″ choke of our test gun at 40 yards, compared with a 42.0% average for the 3″ version. The 0.020″ choke produces average pattern densities of 47.0% and 46.0% for 2½” and 3″ shells, respectively.

The SmallBoreShotguns team have not yet collected sufficient data to draw a firm conclusion for all chokings and distances, but thus far, we can say that if a longer shot column does significantly damage performance, it is not (yet) demonstrated by the Eley “Trap” loadings. In fact, the loss of performance in the 3″ cartridge is so slight that it will easily be outweighed by the greater number of pellets in the case, as the absolute pellet counts presented in the data clearly show.

Note:

We do not consider the Eley “Fourlong” (12½g / #7) and “Extralong” (18g / #7) to be equivalent-except-for-case-length: the former has a fold crimp; the latter a rolled turnover crimp.