Bought a .410

[Ultrastu]

I really enjoyed my decoying yesterday with the .410 .

The single shot really makes you pick your birds and wait till the shot is right .

It was liberating traveling lighter than usual .

For me the .410 is gonna more of a dog walking gun as i walk him over a lot of my perms most days .

[lancer425]

I picked off shelf a new baikal SxS, in a local gun shop to see how it felt.

 

I thunk they just bored out a SxS drilling for 410, weighed a ton, barrels lookex to be upto 1/4 tbick walls and chokes were exceptionally tight, maybe 0.38.

 

Put it back on shelf,

Built on the 20ga frame i measured the chokes on one it was not as tight as you say, but they may come in different boring’s well made built to last and the weight helps the handling i find, i would have one but can not warrant the expenditure i am sorry to say.

[lancer425]

I really enjoyed my decoying yesterday with the .410 .

The single shot really makes you pick your birds and wait till the shot is right .

It was liberating traveling lighter than usual .

For me the .410 is gonna more of a dog walking gun as i walk him over a lot of my perms most days .

I have thought about an 11 gram steel load with the TPS wad and the chediteor fiocchi case using 2.8mm steel but range will need to be adjusted to compensate for this load no matter how you adjust it. Might squeeze a few more yards out of it with more velocity but it will have a shorter max range on pigeons.

[Bluebarrels]

I really enjoyed my decoying yesterday with the .410 .

The single shot really makes you pick your birds and wait till the shot is right .

It was liberating traveling lighter than usual .

For me the .410 is gonna more of a dog walking gun as i walk him over a lot of my perms most days .

I agree if you want to travel light the.410 is perfect,ideal for walking the fields and hedgerows,and 50-75 carts in your pocket is more than enough without the weight or bulk of 12g shells BB

Edited September 23, 2017 by Bluebarrels

[neutron619]

 

Clay cartridges are the answer. I have been using Eley Trap 14g #7.5 lately (Only because I couldn't get any Fiocchi 3", or Eley Trap 3") and have been very impressed with them out to 30yds. I know Eley FourLongs are low on power, and hence the quietest, but the Traps are much faster.

 

The Eley Trap 3" will push 40 yards with the right choke. 0.018" seems to be about the sweet spot on the basis of my testing. (The OP has been given a link to my as-yet-not-public research.)

 

I have no experience of subsonic ammo in the .410 but imagine ranges will need to be reduced and a bigger shot size used to try and compensate. In the field i found the advantages the 3 inch and its heavier load gave to be slight and getting the faster load to pattern was the best option i found. I think you will enjoy making the .410 work i did and the sense of achievement when i got it working was worth the time.

 

In fact, subsonic ammunition tends to perform better than supersonic and hold it's patterns for longer. That's not always the case and other factors can confound the effect, but as a general rule, lower velocity means less pellet damage and better patterns. The effect on individual pellet energy isn't really significant unless the shot is very, very small. In those cases, there is also the question of massively increased pattern densities. I'm not recommending it, but there are plenty of anecdotes out there that say that small loads of #8 or #9 work well on small-to-medium game because the very high pattern density gives you a good chance of hitting something CNS-related and getting an "instant kill". I believe there are one or two well-known members on this forum who use - knowingly or not - this approach.

 

Edit: One last thought. Others have said pattern your gun and you should - but don't be disheartened if you don't get the kind of percentages you'd expect in a 12 gauge. If you can get 50% performance out of any choke - and it almost certainly won't be a full choke - you're doing very well. There are a lot of "secondary" effects which influence performance in smaller bores that are a lot harder to see (or are completely irrelevant) in the larger gauges.

Edited September 23, 2017 by neutron619

[B525 LIGHT]

To claim 7's will always produce a better pattern simply is'nt true. Sounds like the advice many sporting journalists stated in the 80's and 90's. With the onset of true high pheasant shooting the industry has realised that larger sizes often produce a higher percentage of pellet strikes than smaller ones. Pattern your gun with both. It's the only way to tell.

[neutron619]

To claim 7's will always produce a better pattern simply is'nt true. Sounds like the advice many sporting journalists stated in the 80's and 90's. With the onset of true high pheasant shooting the industry has realised that larger sizes often produce a higher percentage of pellet strikes than smaller ones. Pattern your gun with both. It's the only way to tell.

 

I didn't take the comments above to be "always" and I certainly saw a lot of people saying "pattern the gun", so I think we're all broadly in agreement. It's undeniable though, that #7 is the place to start because it is most likely to result in a good balance of pattern and penetration, so it was good advice.

 

That said - and I have to be frank - most .410 cartridges are pretty ****. At least half of them are basically identical, being manufactured by the same continental maker and re-branded. None contain decent, hard lead, with the exception of the Eley clay shells which are marginally better than the average but still not good enough to stand up to the higher pressures inherent in the smaller bores. Most use cheap wads and only occasionally nod in the direction of performance, because there isn't enough of a market to justify the effort or cost of making a top-performing cartridge for hunting. Powder charges are usually small charges of over-fast powder to save on cash: high pressure makes sure that any pellets not crushed out of shape in the initial shove get melted when the combustion gas seeps past the wad. I mean - who wants to use 30 grains of appropriate powder when 15 grains of anything cheap will do (and margins are tight)?

 

Most .410 shells still use RTOs for goodness sake! OK - it keeps the pressure down a bit and might not affect performance (chances are it will) but what it'll certainly do is increase variability. You might have a 120-pellets-in-the-circle average but it'll probably vary in both directions by 25 pellets. Did I hit that bird? Would I have done if I hadn't suddenly lost 20% of my pattern density because that over-shot card didn't come out quite as easily as the last one and sprayed the pellets everywhere? Rolled turnovers should be banished in any gun smaller than an 8-bore as an unnecessary indulgence and only serve to betray poor cartridge design. If there isn’t enough space for the shot and a fold crimp, it’s either the wrong wad, the wrong (or too much) powder, or too much shot for the cartridge. Use a little less of something - more will probably hit the paper / clay / bird.

 

Bah. Rant over.

 

All I'm saying is they know they're doing it cheaply, and none of us are going to get good cartridges until they get the message that we know they're all basically **** (with some notable exceptions), that they can do better and that for probably a 10% increase in price we could all be shooting 18 grams of super-hard #7 through our half chokes and putting 60-70% of them in the circle at 40. It can be done - and if anyone wants to lend the creators of an up-and-coming small bore shooting site of which I'm aware, a .410 loading press, I'll get them to prove it and publish the data.

 

The irony is, half of the **** they do to try and differentiate 12 gauge cartridges and win market share for those has no useful effect on the cartridges - they're all basically adequate. Doing the same stuff for .410 however, would probably revolutionise the gauge.

Edited September 25, 2017 by neutron619

[Ultrastu]

Just recived my .410 9 inch detachable moderator for my .410 yildiz.

Really looking forward to getting it on there .

And seeing how the pige like it .

[Ultrastu]

Just fitted the mod on my gun .

And fired 3 shots before work .

First impressions are very good .

Seems as quiet as I'd hoped for possibly better .

Definatly quieter than my hush 20b

And it doesn't feel too long or unbalanced either

More info later

[MR. BROWN]

As a kid, I rolled quite a few rabbits with a sweet little SB Stevens ( Chicopee Falls ) .410, then moved onto a Mossberg pump 20 gauge.

 

Now that I've 'grown up' I now only use 12 Gauge guns.

 

I no longer understand the attraction in using sub gauges in gameshooting.

 

NB: I am waiting on delivery of a 20 gauge U/O for clay targets.

[Ultrastu]

Well the appeal for me over my 20 b

Is that the gun is very light to carry and easy to shoot and makes little noise. (Important on my perms )

And has the benefit as being a training gun for my kids .

The fact it also kills pigeons up to 30 yds is a bonus .

[Highlandsjohn]

That is excellent info and very much appreciated.

Thankyou

Iirc and I could be wrong after all these years, On the notes on the reverse side of the old 10/- gun license the effective killing range of the 12 bore using no 6 shot was 30 yds and 15 yds for the 410. We used eley grand prix then at 14/3d for a box of 25.(12 bore)

Lovely gun and great pic of the spaniel.

[Walker570]

At this moment I have 16 days driven shooting arranged for the forthcoming season, plus any crow/pigeon shooting I can fit in. I doubt very much that I will be using anything other than my O/U 410, maybe the Mossy for pigeons/crows. I kill my share. Average under 3 to 1 ...best season was 2.4 to 1( my wife counts my shots and birds killed, If I miss she reminds me it was a wasted cartridge ). I do not shoot at birds I don't believe I can kill and on an average shoot there are very few that are over 35yrds. I have too many years past, where I have shot most legal quarry in the UK with all gauges other than 28 gauge and for many years shot exclusively 16s,

S/S and a Rem semi auto. I moved to 410 four years ago and will rarely shoot any other in the future. I do take my Grandfather's old BSA s/s 12 gauge for a day out once a year, because he would want me to. I'm certainly not wealthy and the extra cost of 410 shells is irrelevant. I don't smoke( what are they now £10 a packet), a glass of whisky each night and an occasional beer. You spends your hard earned where you wish.

[Ultrastu]

So does the .410 and moderator work for decoying?

You bet ya .this was just an hours sitting under a tree with a couple of shells out on the last of the wheat stubble .

Only took 10 shots and one of those was to check zero .

In the open field its very quiet .much more so than my 20b hush .

This is gonna be a very stealthy effective tool .

 

Chuffed to bits

[Ultrastu]

Walker .I totally agree.

Although the carts are expensive . £8.30 a box .

My 20b are £ 7.30

I dont go shooting to save money .

My smile after the above shoot was huge .

This is gonna be a perfect gun for training the young uns.

[Guest]

What make of subsonic cartridges are you using .

[Ultrastu]

Im using gamebore hunting .410

Which are 16 grm of no6 plaswads

Not subsonic carts .

..

[Walker570]

Nice one. Like the Thompson/Center Association motto ...'One Good Shot'. I must try a few of those GameBore ... there again I have to try Hull High Pheasant ....and there again, a friend has just told me he will give me a few FOB shells to try on the partridges at Catton next week ....CHOICES ...CHOICES!!! The joys of owning and shooting a 410.

[Ultrastu]

And weirdly enough. Not a red dot in sight ??

My plan was to red dot this gun to allow for it shooting low with the moderator on the end .turns out that it shoots spot on flat .out to 25 yds .and comes up to the eye on aim perfectly .

And judging by the dead birds is bang on .

[Ultrastu]

Just a little update on the hushpower 9 inch mod on the .410 .i tested it for quietness at range today .as i got my mate to shoot it . At 80 yds and fired roughly towards my position (safely )I could hardly hear the gun but could hear the shot in flight (never heard that before from a shotty ) much like an airgun pellet in flight .

This thing is very quiet and I now have no worries about upsetting anyone more than 100 yds away .

Very pleased and highly reccomended .

[Tedly47]

Hi and welcome to the .410 appreciation society😁 I have a small collection of .410's and I also use gamebore 16g carts, very quiet and pack a good punch... I've just bought a hushpower and I'm shocked how quiet it is.... keep up the .410 good work...

 

Tedly

[Ultrastu]

Thanks .and just to say I'm looking forward to shooting this very capable little cart over some tricky permissions at some ungodly hours .

[browning123]

I presume it's a full choke .

On card it holds a group with these carts out to about 25 yds max .

Well they were no 6 shot .but gonna get some 19.5 grm no7.5 to try .

There is no point in using subsonic carts .

Why would I limit myself ? The gamebore were £8.30 a box .

Which is more than my 20b carts .Still i did enjoy myself so it's largely irrelevant .

I dont shoot to save money .

I presume it's a full choke .

On card it holds a group with these carts out to about 25 yds max .

Well they were no 6 shot .but gonna get some 19.5 grm no7.5 to try .

There is no point in using subsonic carts .

Why would I limit myself ? The gamebore were £8.30 a box .

Which is more than my 20b carts .Still i did enjoy myself so it's largely irrelevant .

I dont shoot to save money .

I own a Yildiz TK36 single barrel folding .410 and its bored half choke, I also have a u/o .410 by the same maker.

[Ultrastu]

How do you get on with the tk36 ?

[browning123]

How do you get on with the tk36 ?

To be honest it's for sale, due to not using the gun. Since buying the TK36 I bought a Yildiz u/o .410 and a baikal hushpower.