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.