it's weekend time again.

[fiver]

hiding?

we had a banner year this year with only 3 people getting caught for shooting a cow [the ones that go moo] instead of a deer, not counting the one that brought it into town wanting to purchase a doe tag.
I did see a couple of others belly up that were probably not accounted for.

 

[Intheshop]

Dang Fiver,that's pretty scary.

Saw a note on some wildlife management area linky one of the boys sent me..... "from a hillside,there were so many blaze orange hunters in there it looked like a pumpkin patch"

 

[fiver]

we sold completely out of out of state tags this year.
the estimate was 530 OOS hunters in our little corner of the state.
that's a 10+% increase in our county's population, I don't think we even have 530 deer in either our county or the one below us combined..

 

[Intheshop]

Heck,if our counties deer population increases any more,they're going to be classified "nuisance species"....

There's 500 within 5 minutes of here.Heck,we probably have a hundred from what we can see out the dang windows.

They don't even move when I'm riding around on the tractor until you practically run them over..... they walk in front of the 100 yard target berm within minutes of me blasting.

 

[fiver]

some places are like that.
I bought a fishing license when I was working down in Texas and had a couple of free days, they gave me 10 Deer tags..
I was like what am I supposed to do with these,,, beat them down with my 20$ fishing pole on the side of the highway?

 

[Ian]

Season runs from beginning of October into mid-January plus youth and late spike/antlerless season. Rifle season starts Saturday, but it's the usual deal where it's so hot they spoil before they hit the dirt. Supposed to get some cool fronts in a few weeks, might see some light frost by Thanksgiving.

 

[fiver]

I could mail you some frost, there is a 3 gallon bucket of it out back under the faucet.

 

[fiver]

okay I waited until Monday.
it was a toss up between talking about my shotgun patterns yesterday or my thoughts on what things were like for our Grandparents. [which is actually one word or two]
then I figured meh it's my thread I can tell a little story about the one, and maybe write a little rant about the other.

so here goes.
we all know guns are an anomaly and they all have their little quirks.
most shotguns are pretty good about handling a wide range of components and giving you back pretty much a consistent result across the board. [this one has certainly been that way]
yesterday was a little different.
I decided to try the new load I worked on last fall, now it's pretty much an old load I have shot with good success but it needed an improvement of some kind.
I didn't put much thought into it since the old version was breaking birds pretty good and others that have shot the load had good success with it too.
we always shot the load when it was warm and everyone agreed it was a fine.

well yesterday it was about 30-F and I wasn't breaking the birds very well.
I was cutting them in half, knocking a chunk off the bottom or front of the bird, and things just didn't seem right.
my first thought was I'm not pointing the gun in the right place.
no,, the sight picture is correct the breaks are wrong.
hmm.
down to the pattern plate real quick.
bang.
hmm.
bang...hmm
bang,, yeah that sucks.
ahh they are calling me out to shoot.
okay, really quick,, lets see splotchy and hot core.
choke change, let's open the choke up.
this is pretty much backwards from what you want to do in the cold and especially with smaller shot.
but the picture is right there telling me I need to move pellets out into the rest of the pattern.
so I open the choke about 5 thou. and go out to shoot the 100 targets.
immediate improvement and I only miss 2 birds out of the 100 we shot for a score of 98.
but no more chips and chunks or cuts we, are up to solid hits and well centered birds in the pattern again.

 

[Ian]

I get the clumps and holes thing with the bargain-basement wally world remchester #8, even with I/C chokes. STS never seems to do that, even with Modified and Full, but the Coldest I ever remember it being when going out with a shotgun was 75F. So temp is a big deal with patterns, huh? Why?

 

[Brad]

Likely has to do with slight changes in powder burn rate and the plastic wads behaving slightly different. Do the petals not open the same? Does the cushion section not cushion the same?

 

[Eutectic]

Several years back Robert up in Montana asked me to come over and shoot sporting clays in Florence. The place was closing but Robert had a key.
I said OK and got ready.... The mercury read minus -5° below

We both had old guns.... Mine the youngster made in 1910. The Sheriff in Salmon bought it new in 1912 and I got it when a grandson? sold it. It had the outer wear of a ranch shotgun for almost 90 years; but I had Briley tubes in the barrel and the internals were like a fine watch.!! A Winchester Model 97. Robert had his Wesley Richards damascus made in 1880 something...

We pulled into the clubhouse and my Jeep thermometer read 9°.... Heck it had warmed up! We shot the hundred round course and were about half through.... We dropped into a long valley and the deeper we got into it the colder it got! "We are in one of your Montana thermals Robert!" "Yeah" he said..

It was bitter. We soon were having off loads... Not bloopers but just soft (a different sound.) The shots were close here like 30 yards... I had to get ahead of the birds more.... Patterns were tighter..... We got smokeballs when we got ahead of them enough with loads probably doing 900fps!

We finally got to the club house and went to the fire...... "Frost on the pumpkin Robert!" I joked. "Yeah" he said.

We fired up to leave.... The Jeep thermometer read -22°F below zero!

My experience is shotguns get slower and tighter as the mercury drops... And I don't know what happens lower than minus 22!

Pete

 

[fiver]

it has more to do with air resistance than anything else.
your throwing 430 pellets that weigh a grain each.
but even the larger shot sizes have to fight the air resistance, part of it with them is the frontal area pushing against the air.

this one load has been pretty much designed as a lower recoil load from the beginning.
it has a long cushion section wad, just over an ounce of shot, and 19.8-.9grs. of a slower burning target/field propellant giving me right around 1170 fps.
I also used a wad with 8 petals instead of 4 for better pellet release..
the old load was using 19.5grs of powder.
that .3 grs was just enough of a pressure rise to help the powder burn cleaner [which also helps hull life believe it or not] but it's also bumping the base of the wad better too.
I'm using a mix of 3 and 3.5% antimony shot in these shells so I got plenty of BHN.




with the bargain ammo you get all kinds of weird stuff from two problems.
the first is the dead soft shot.
and the second is the cheap wads they use in some of the loads.
your disrupting and deforming the shot before it ever leaves the gun then it jostles it's way out of the shot cloud.
one of the better ones was the Federal 100 packs they were using a good Rio wad, primer and pretty decent shot.[they just changed their hulls/primers and I haven't got one to pull down to check the wad]
some of the medium Winchester stuff was using a cheaper copy of the AA wad but super soft shot, a pretty fair compromise [but a cruddy inconsistent primer]
the federal promo 'top-gun' stuff uses a pretty good hull but internally they are damn near a 1960's throw back and soft as you can get shot.

the Remington shotgun stuff comes in 3 tiers and you get what you pay for with them.
the all use a good wad, but the antimony content of the shot goes up with each step, as does the primer quality.
the lower end stuff uses about 2% antimony [gun clubs]
their field and clay stuff uses the old RXP wad and 4% antimony and a little better primer.
their STS and Nitro loads use 6% antimony shot and their figure-8 wad as well as their premier primer.

 

[fiver]

I get a lot of guy's telling me about their low pressure loads and how they are reducing recoil or making it easier on their guns etc.
but then I hear and see them miss birds because of an inefficient load.
their velocity varies 50 fps or a lot more.

it's not worth the effort to even try to make decent shot shells at 8500 psi unless your working with an older gun that can't take it.
with anything made since @ 1900 your better off just going straight to 10-K psi loads with a higher brisance primer.
I use a lot of Rio primers, they are right up there with Winchester and just below the Federal 209-A,
everything else is maybe okay with the real fast powders.
I don't want 'maybe' okay, I got enough problems.
I also don't need fast, I'm okay with higher pressure, medium velocity, medium weight loads.
they do what they are supposed to do all of the time.

 

[Eutectic]

When I was shooting vintage gun competition we shot a lot in winter. And you know our winters 'pale' a lot of other places! You are right on wad choice. The Federal spiral cushions (12S0, 12S3) are good in the cold. I used to have winter and fair weather shells...... For winter the crimps had to be perfect and hulls loaded less. I used 209A Federals some but never really liked them.
Not sure about your air density equation.... Shot is absolutely horrible to retain velocity anyway! You can start a piece of #9 shot at 4000 feet per second and it will drop to the ground in 200 yards! Air density works the opposite on humans....... That bitter day I spoke of above we finished the course in record time!

 

[fiver]

it does make you learn how to move efficiently... LOL.

one observation on the Federal wads.
they seem to be fairly insensitive to chokes that are close in diameter.
a change from say a modified to a light modified means pretty much nothing to them.
you have to go a whole .0010 to make much of a change in how they pattern, and that generally just shifts a few pellets from place to place.

 

[Eutectic]

Never shot them much in tight (trap) chokes. 010" is about what we shoot sporting clays with. Got one ol' Remington Model 31 I love with a 26" barrel marked 'Mod' It has .013" constriction and I shoot it well. 16 gauge by the way.....I compete with pumps..... or at least did.... sporting clays has gotten to be a L O N G drive for us.

 

[fiver]

13 is more like a tight IC than a mod.
I know a couple of guy's that would swear on a stack of bibles that 12-13 is some kind of magical choke number though.

chokes are an odd thing I have good luck with IC in one gun shooting 3 drams of Clays, 7-1/2's, and the rem fig-8 wad.
it also does well with a load of titegroup and 1-oz of 8's still a 10-K load but only moving about 1150 fps, and with the RL-12 wad [like the RXP only for 1oz] loaded with 1-1/16 oz of shot, with red-dot.
I'm kind of surprised at how well it does with those various loads, since it's set up for duck hunting and has a 3-1/2" chamber.

in my model 1300 the mod choke is stuck in place and will smoke clays at 35-40 yds like a full choke, and will cleanly snipe the head off a grouse at 25 yds using the Fed 12-SO wad, the fed 209A and titewad.
it also does well with the 1-1/8oz windjammer wad and red-dot with 1.05 oz of shot, but it doesn't pattern as tight, it throws a good strong core just not close to 70-75%.
it still shoots steel shot just fine if I stay with #2's, or does well with fast [like near 1400 fps] #5's if I use a steel shot wad and long shot powder.

the choke change thing threw me off for a bit because most of my trap guns have fixed chokes and standard .729 bores.
I don't have the 'help the load out option' on them, so have just learned to tune the load to the gun and stick with what works method over the years.

all the above loads I mentioned have been various guns pet loads over the years,.
the r-12L load is for the 3200.
the windjammer load is both of the girls preferred load in different guns [one a semi-auto and one an over under]
the titewad load is for littlegirls pump gun.
some guns shoot them all good enough, and some just preferred them to anything else.

the choke thing kind of caught me by surprise on this one, it was the exact opposite of what I would have expected to have to do.

 

[Rally]

Were you shooting Red Dot that cold day?

 

[Eutectic]

I was shooting American Select that bitter cold day. Robert's load was amazing though! Using PB powder....It is only about 5,000 psi in 'normal' temps! His old Wesley Richards has Damascus barrels. (I've seen thousands of rounds shot in that old gun!) His loads were mighty slow at -22°F below but neither of us had a blooper-type load where you can watch the wad and shot go or even worse. leave the wad in the barrel.

IMR PB is an absolute great powder in the 16 gauge for that matter. But nothing has the uniformity at very low pressure like PB does... or did. Too bad we had to color a bunch of new double base powders that can't hold a candle to it for these specialty loads!

 

[Intheshop]

Was thinking of Brad.... cheap vinyl by the yard. I bought 3 yds 20sumthin years ago. Still using it. This is a controls box but the covers really come into their own on vintage sheet metal equipment.

The new shopdog is awesome.... "she's a greeter".... best said with a Britisher voice,haha. She's been out ripping n romping this a.m. and has her bed by the main shop door foyer. Sits like the RCA dog watching me using air grinders.... she seems to be happiest in the shop?