For a variety of reasons, we Americans cherish the notion that bigger is better, that more is intrinsically superior to less. Sometimes it is. Apply the idea to woodcock populations, first-class quail habitat, or disposable income, and you'll get no argument from me. Extend the same thinking to cartridges, though, and you'll have to include me out.
Every gauge has its optimum load, worked out by the British a hundred years ago or more, and it functions as the relationship between bore diameter and shot-column length. In short, the optimum load is the maximum quantity of shot a given bore can handle with optimum efficiency, and even though shotgun cartridges are infinitely better than they used to be, optimum loads really haven't changed. The standards still are 1 1/8 ounces for 12-gauge, an ounce for the 16, 7/8-ounce in 20-bore, and 3/4-ounce for the 28.
The ammunition industry, running full-tilt on the American penchant for making something good into something bigger, has for years seen the standard loads mainly as a point of departure from which to hawk overloaded cartridges with such fanciful, and clearly effective, jargon as "magnum" and "high-power" and "express." If you've ever wondered why the standard American cartridge case is 2 3/4 inches long while the British still pack their game loads into 2 1/2-inch cases, the answer is simple--our cases are longer because we insist upon putting more shot into them.
PREDICTABLY, THE RIPPLE EFFECTS of this have influenced our view of guns as well. Years ago, those who most stoutly championed the 16-gauge often argued that the 16 was "best" because you could "load it up like a 12 or down like a 20." You've heard this litany, no doubt, but tell me: Did you ever know one of these old boys to put a 20-gauge load through his 16?
The same thing happened in turn with the 20-gauge, hailed far and wide for its "versatility"--which of course simply meant that cartridge manufacturers had found a way of stuffing an ungodly amount of shot into it. They did so mainly by resurrecting the three-inch 20-bore case, which had been around since the turn of the century, thereby creating the fabled "20-gauge gun with the 12-gauge load."
In theory and in fact, the three-inch 20-gauge cartridge is the worst abortion ever foisted upon the gunning world. Here's why. The only way to get more shot into any given bore is to stack the pellets. The longer the shot column in relation to bore diameter, the less efficient the performance, for several reasons. First, the longer column places more pellets in contact with the barrel wall, which scrapes them out of round and turns them into useless flyers. Moreover, the longer and heavier the shot charge, the more it resists thrust from the powder gases, in part because of increased friction and in part simply because a heavier object is harder to move. This increases chamber pressure and also means more crushed pellets at the bottom of the column; these string out behind the main swarm, rapidly shedding velocity and contributing nothing to pattern efficiency.
Extra-hard or plated shot protected by a good shot cup and cushioned by a collapsible wad mitigates this to some extent--all the more if the pellets are buffered as well. But even if none of the pellets get battered out of shape, a long shot column in the cartridge still creates a long shot string in the air. This won't show up on your patterning plate, because a stationary plate only shows where the pellets strike in cross-section, not how long it takes them all to get there. What looks like a wonderfully dense pattern more likely is a strung-out mess gaping with holes big enough to throw an Irish setter through.
The bottom line is that the advantages of overloaded rounds are largely illusory. In practical fact, the bloody things aren't worth either the expense or the discomfort. And they are discomfortable in the extreme.
THANKS TO MR. NEWTON'S EQUAL and opposite reaction, the more pressure the powder works up trying to drive a big shot charge out of the case and down the bore, the more force is exerted backwards as well. The greater the pressure, the greater the kick. Recoil makes you fidget and flinch, makes you lift your head away from the gun, makes your whole body tighten up just when it should be loose and flexible, makes you stop your swing, makes you miss.
Here again, I can't think of any better example than the so-called magnum 20. I've fired just about every factory load that's been on the market for the past 25 years, and nothing has ever slugged me harder than the three-inch 20 in a lightweight gun.
So what good are 30 percent more pellets if they're giving you less-effective patterns, less-efficient shooting, and beating hell out of you to boot?
The same principle that makes the three-inch 20 such a wretched customer applies to every other gauge as well, although bore size confers some latitude in varying degrees. The smaller the bore, the less tolerant it is of overloads. That's why the typical 28-gauge turns from beauty to beast with anything more than 3/4-ounce of shot, and it's also why the .410 is so often unreliable with any load.
Larger bores can much better handle a bit more shot, simply because shot-column height increases proportionately less. That's why a 12-gauge shoots a 1 1/4-ounce pigeon load so beautifully. Similarly, a 16 will do okay with an extra eighth-ounce of shot--but the 16 behaves so sweetly with a light powder charge behind a one-ounce load that there's nothing at all to be gained from anything heavier.
Even when the shot charge is held to optimum level, too much powder produces its own sort of overload. This probably doesn't wreck patterns quite as badly as too much shot does, but a heavy powder charge doesn't confer any advantage, either. It's a fact of shotgun ballistics that the faster you drive pellets out of the muzzle, the faster they slow down once in the air. The way to get more punch and more reach is to use heavier pellets, not more powder.
All a heavy powder charge really does is batter you with more recoil, which is not only unnecessary punishment but also, as I've said, a detriment to good shooting.
Now, none of this is to say that there aren't some advantages in departing from standard loads, only that the direction we've traditionally chosen has not always been the best one. With few exceptions, adding shot is no improvement. Taking some away, however, can produce astonishing results.
Not so long ago, the notion of reducing the standard shot charge for any gauge was looked upon in this country as the veriest lunacy. After all, if a certain amount of shot is good, then more must be better and less must therefore be worse...or even if less isn't exactly worse, it at least requires compensation by increasing the powder charge.
So the thinking went, and so, to an unfortunate extent, it still goes, kept alive by our infatuation with firepower and the mistaken idea that heavy loads are somehow a fit substitute for good shooting.
UNTIL RECENTLY, EVEN OPTIMUM LOADS in game-shooting configurations weren't always easy to find, so badly did the market suffer from epidemic magnumitis. Optimum-load small-bore rounds with any shot larger than No. 9 were particularly tough to come by. Now, however, the American trade is beginning to wise up and offer good cartridges to those who understand that ammunition doesn't have to brutalize a shooter in order to kill a bird.
Some new, slow-burning, low-pressure powders have created excellent 12-gauge loads that also are comfortable to shoot. Winchester's 1 1/8-ounce Super-Lite target load is extremely good. So is Federal's wonderfully efficient Extra-Lite. Activ's Ultra-Lite and Remington's new Duplex target round, which combines Nos. 7 1/2 and 8 shot in the same load, certainly are soft on recoil, but I haven't yet shot enough of them to form an opinion of their performance.
The situation with small-bore ammunition still has a long way to go. Thanks to the growing popularity of sporting clays, some good 7/8-ounce 20-gauge loads of 7 1/2 and 8 shot are available from Activ, Federal, and Winchester. Sixteens and 28-gauges continue to be weak sisters in the ammo market, but some useful versions are available in those, too.
I hope these cartridges represent a trend toward lighter loads. If so, there's one further step we can look forward to. It's revolutionary, as American gunning history goes, and it won't catch on overnight, but it'll be the best thing that's happened to ammunition since the plastic hull.
If there are few truly good reasons to shoot anything heavier than the optimum load in any gauge, the converse does not hold true. In fact, reducing optimum shot charges will in most gauges produce extraordinary results. Instead of feeding your favorite bird gun a load better suited to the next gauge larger, try a load traditionally used for the next gauge smaller; you'll be more than pleasantly surprised at what you find.
WE HAVE A HUNDRED YEARS OF EVIDENCE and experience to show that an ounce of shot ahead of a light powder charge performs beautifully in a 12-bore gun. And by "light" charge, I don't mean the typical 3 1/4-dram, one-ounce field load, which is almost as brutal as a three-inch 20 and, except for International clay-target shooting, nearly as useless. I mean a powder charge of about 2 3/4-drams-equivalent or three drams at the most, something on the order of a standard English game load.
Here, too, domestic cartridge-makers are beginning to fill the need. One-ounce, 2 3/4-dram loads are available from Activ, Federal, and Winchester. The Winchester offering, loaded in a AA-type case and marketed under the trade-name Xtra-Lite, is especially good. Estate Cartridge Company of Conroe, Texas, manufactures an excellent 1 1/16-ounce 12-gauge load in a 2 1/2-inch case and an equally good 15/16-ounce load in a 2 3/4-inch case. Word has it that Estate is working on a 7/8-ounce 12-bore load as well.
We've had much less opportunity to try reduced loads in other gauges, mainly because factory cartridges thus loaded simply weren't available here. American makers have yet to produce anything lighter than ounce loads in 16-gauge and 7/8-ounce in 20.
If you're a handloader, there's a whole world of light cartridges waiting to be tried. While the 12-gauge load in the 20-gauge gun is a worthless instrument of torture, a 20-gauge load in a 12-gauge gun is a revelation. So, for that matter, is a 28-gauge load in the same 12-bore.
Current interest in 7/8-ounce 12-gauge loads originated in the late 1970s and early '80s among target shooters seeking relief from recoil and also some relief from the rising cost of shot. At first, those who wrote about these loads almost invariably referred to them as "powder-puff" or "pipsqueak" or some phrase equally revealing of the bigger-is-better attitude that's plagued us for so long.
The cutesy language soon disappeared, though, because everyone who gave them a serious trial reported the same conclusion: 12-gauge rounds loaded with 7/8-ounce of shot may feel like powder-puffs on your shoulder, but they'll smoke targets time after time.
Indeed, they will, and they'll smoke game birds just as handily. My wife and I shoot thousands of them every year at skeet, sporting clays, and game--doves, quail, woodcock, grouse, and feral pigeons. Loaded at 1,200 to 1,220 feet per second with Nos. 8 or 9 shot for targets and copper-plated 7 1/2's for birds, these cartridges are deadly as lightning. And you can shoot them all day without getting beaten to a pulp. A couple of my favorite recipes are listed at the end of the chapter.
SUCH WONDERFUL RESULTS from 20-gauge loads led me to wonder if an even lighter charge would perform as well, and for the past few weeks I've been testing a recipe that puts a 28-gauge load--3/4-ounce of shot--into a 12-gauge cartridge. In a word, the results so far are superb. In my 6 1/2-pound game gun, recoil is practically nil, while striking energy appears to be ferocious. From a cylinder-bore barrel, they consistently shatter clay targets at about 40 yards and reduce them to dust at the same distance with a modified choke.
Since most upland birds are killed considerably closer to the gun than 40 yards, I have no reason to believe they won't perform every bit as well on doves and quail, woodcock and grouse. Come fall, I intend to find out. This recipe, too, is listed at the end.
As a fringe benefit, both 7/8- and 3/4-ounce loads are splendid for beginners, who stand an excellent chance of hitting plenty of targets without any discomfort from recoil. Between my wife's old Superposed skeet gun and a few cases of my 3/4-ounce handloads, our 11-year-old daughter thinks shooting is almost as much fun as lipstick and M.J. Hammer.
Reduced loads work for precisely the same reasons that extremely heavy loads don't. Shot columns are quite short relative to bore size. Being lightweight, the charges don't put up excessive resistance to the powder gases, so there's less likelihood of crushed and useless pellets at the bottom of the column, especially with hardened or plated shot.
These factors combine to create short shot strings with relatively few flyers, which in turn creates highly efficient cartridges. They may, in other words, not carry a lot of shot, but the pellets they do carry all reach the target at pretty much the same time. Pellet density is therefore high at almost every point in the shot string's length--and that makes an effective load.
WE'VE BEEN BRAINWASHED FOR GENERATIONS to believe that only a heavy load will kill a game bird, and we've convinced ourselves that the more shot we fling, the more likely we are to hit what we're shooting at. It just ain't so.
The fact is, no upland bird hunter needs more than an ounce of shot, and you can do just as well with less, because no upland bird needs to be hit by more than five or six well-placed pellets carrying reasonable burdens of kinetic energy. The energy derives from a combination of velocity and mass (pellet size, in other words) and the placement from a combination of accurate shooting and a shot swarm that isn't strung out to hell and gone.
More to the point, you don't have to shoot a bird to dollrags in order to kill it cleanly, and you'll shoot worse, not better, with heavy loads. No amount of shot will do any good if you don't put it where the bird is, and the best shooting in the world cannot compensate for poor ballistics. Either way, less is more.
The following recipes are quoted either from manufacturer's data or were developed and tested by professional ballisticians. Follow them exactly; do not alter quantities or substitute components. As with all reloading information, neither the author nor the publisher have any control over the manner in which these data are used and therefore assume no responsibility.
Note: This load may not ignite reliably at ambient temperatures below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and probably will not cycle the action of any current autoloading gun.
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