Indoor range for shotgun patterning?

[gh1950]

Your argumentative "contribution" to this thread is duly noted.
You are welcome to go pattern your own shotgun that you regularly break clays with at 40 yards and kill small birds with at 40 yards.
Post the pics here and show us what your pattern looks like.

It's not argumentative.

A gentleman name Bruce Buck has done most of the leg work, and his articles are widely available online. I mostly defer to him. I commend his many articles based on empirical evidence to you.

Years ago, another gentleman mounted targets on trailers and drove the trailers at known speeds, and proved that the shot string would hit targets consistently.

A skeet field is 40 yds. wide, more or less, and trap targets are set for 40 yards. A skeet chokes patterned at a static target at 40 yards will likely show "holes" in the pattern, but can consistently break targets at the far house because there are no true "straightaways" in skeet.

Conversely, a choke with shows no holes when shot at a static pattern will eventually have a "hole" due to a mathematical principle known as "Gaussian distribution."

For buckshot and turkey loads, shooting at static targets has some value because it duplicates field conditions.

 

[gh1950]

Regular screw in chokes don’t tighten up a pattern as advertised, imo.

If you want a tight pattern at 40 yards you gotta buy a full length full choke barrel. Imo.

Interesting you would say that. Live pigeon shooters are probably the best shot gun shooters in the world. The very top shooters almost all shoot fixed choked guns because they have each barrel of their gun tuned to one shell, one load.

Likewise many top trap shooters shoot fixed choke guns because they are always shooting the same target.

In both cases the feeling is that the long choking effect that can be built into the barrel produces more uniform patterns due to less disruption of the shot column.

 

[GAgunLAWbooklet]

I agree. In my limited experience with screw-in choke tubes (of which I have a lot of experience with 12 and 20 gauge Mossberg 500 shotguns but nothing else)
in comparing that to Mossberg 500 shotguns in 12 gauge and also Ithaca shotguns in 16 gauge that have fixed chokes built into the barrel at the factory--- I think that the screw-in choke tubes are less efficient.

But they sure are convenient.

 

[Pond Scum]

A few years ago Trigger Time in Flowery Branch was allowing the public to shoot any shotgun ammo. I have not been there since.
There only comment was to "shoot low"

 

[GAgunLAWbooklet]

New info regarding shotgun patterning:

In my prior post with pics of my test papers, I was using Federal loads with #6 shot.
They were averaging 55% within the 30" circle at 40 yards.

Now I did the same test with Remington's #7.5 shells. I got 140/350 for one test shot, and 125/350 with the other. That's about 40% of the pellets landing in the 30" circle, which I drew AFTER I fired, and made sure to encircle the greatest number of hits on the paper.

I can't figure out why such a change in performance. It's the same gun, the same shooter (me) the same distance (paced off-but both times by me under identical circumstances).

Oh, and when I cleaned the shotgun today, I noticed that the barrel IS marked for the choke-- it says "MOD" in teeny tiny letters. That's in addition to code number "2" which I think also shows it's a modified choke.