9mm Garden Gun Patterns

[neutron619]

Hello Chaps,

I don't have any particular comment on the following, except that they're provided for anyone who might be interested in seeing them.

There's not an awful lot of information about the little Flobert shells online - that I can find anyway - so these are published here to add to what little there is.

These are example 5-yard, 10-yard, 15-yard and 20-yard patterns from a 9mm, cylinder-choked garden gun, using the Fiocchi 7½g / #7½ (Italian) cartridge.

I believe individual pellet energy at 15 yards is around 0.7ftlbs for reference. Circles / part-circles on the images below are 20".

I hope this is of some use to someone, at some point.

Edited October 28, 2017 by neutron619

[redial]

That's interesting.

Thank you for posting.

[TIGHTCHOKE]

The Sparrows and Mice around Cambridge are very worried and will not let you get within 20 yards.

[Continental Shooter]

Back in the days (25-30 years ago) this is what we kids would get to learn the trade of shooting.

 

i recall starting to reload the brass shells while grandpa was reloading his and keeping an eye on me.

 

We would then go out of the shop and try it on whatherver was about: in spring-summer was mice, rats starlings or whatever food thieves would come close enogh; in winter was blackbirds, thrushes, pigeons and anything else that would land close to the live decoys.

 

I once had a pheasant as well while waiting for a rat that was bursting bags of grains for the chickens...

 

Anyway, i am sure if you log into one of the many reloading Italian web sites you can find lots of info on the mythical Flobert reloading and results

[figgy]

That 20 yard pattern is a lot better than I thought it would be. Great garden small pest tool.

[Rimfireboy]

I’ve been using rws Flobert #10 shot, works well on rats under feeders etc.

[stuartyboy]

Very interesting, thank you

[Hamster]

The patterns look amazing, I had no idea these rounds could be so good.

[GingerCat]

That looks better than what's perceived generally about the little cartridge. From those pics I would say a 15-20 yard rat isn't out of the question and that's a handy tool to have.

 

Double post.

Edited October 29, 2017 by GingerCat

[figgy]

Did you use the double charge cartridges ?

Edited October 30, 2017 by figgy

[neutron619]

Did you use the double charge cartridges ?

 

No idea - it was these in an Italian #7½:

 

http://www.fiocchiuk.com/site/index.php?pag=790&linea=35&titolo_prod=Flobert

 

I keep hearing about "double charge" and I always thought it was just the RWS brand name for their Flobert cartridges, and that if it wasn't I never knew whether it was supposed to indicate shot or powder. I've never found a Flobert cartridge that didn't have about 7g of shot in it though...

Edited October 30, 2017 by neutron619

[stuartyboy]

With your findings regarding patterns and energy, what practical/humane range do you think the 9mm garden gun has?

[Blackpowder]

How do you reload rim fire shells?

 

Blackpowder

[neutron619]

With your findings regarding patterns and energy, what practical/humane range do you think the 9mm garden gun has?

I hesitate to state a number as I've never pointed one at live game and don't intend to do so in future, but I would think somewhere between 12-15 yards for normal small / medium UK quarry on the basis of what I've seen so far.

I've patterned the Fiocchi #6 (IT) and #7½ (IT) cartridges and a very small number of the RWS #10 loading.

The #6 cartridge and to a lesser extent the #7½, I would probably trust to "rifle-shoot" pigeons, small rabbits and any smaller species at the distances I've specified above. I mean "rifle-shoot" in the sense of taking aimed shots at stationary or near-stationary targets. In that sense, the 9mm Flobert cartridge really is what many people believe the .410 to be.

Neither cartridge is really suitable for moving game and although I've done a lot of work elsewhere, for example, to produce evidence for the .410 being a perfectly good gun for wingéd / fast-moving targets, I am defeated by the 9mm - it just isn't capable of it, except by relying almost entirely on luck, which renders it inhumane. Unlike the .410, where there is a range of cartridge effectiveness, from the truly awful (most 2" / 2½" loadings; many continental cartridges) to the basically capable (e.g. the better 2½" / 3" loadings), the 9mm doesn't have either the range of ammunition (to allow for cartridges more or less suited to the individual firearm) or the inherent capacity to work with.

To put it in it's proper place, I'd consider the 2" .410 loadings, collectively, as being capable out to around 20 yards - whether limited by pellet energy or pattern - and the 9mm is the next logical step downward as you'd expect. A 2" .410 round might only produce 900-1000fps at the muzzle; the 9mm is in the region of 600-700fps. That 2" .410 round loaded with #9 shot will give about the same individual pellet energy at 15 yards as a 9mm cartridge loaded with Italian #6, give or take. There's not that much between them ballistically: a gap, certainly and the 9mm usually comes off worse, but it's not as big as you might expect. To counter: how many people regularly rely on 2" .410 cartridges?

There are some special considerations with the garden gun however.

Almost certainly due to the muzzle velocity being around half of "normal" shotgun velocity, garden gun patters are noticeably smaller, with fewer fliers than the equivalent "normal" pattern at any given distance. That means that, although the overall pattern is smaller, the density within the pattern area will usually be equivalent to a cartridge with a much higher number of pellets. The 56 pellets we saw in the 20" circle for one of the 20-yard patterns using the Fiocchi #6 cartridge is theoretically equivalent to around 120-130 pellets in a 30" circle. That's a sparse pattern for pigeon, but it would probably do the job most of the time and the energy is there too. Knock a few yards off that and you can see why it's called a garden gun - it would probably knock over the woodies rummaging around your feeders which you've intended for smaller, prettier songbirds.

The other thing is that you have to take the velocity of the shot into consideration. Even in 5-yard pattern tests, it's possible to hear two distinct noises - that of the shot, and that of the pellets going through the paper / card. By the time you get out to 20 yards, you're getting the kind of delay you'd expect from an "ordinary" cartridge at 45-50 yards. That should emphasize the point about aimed shots and stationary targets - there's a real risk that even a small deviation off target would leave you with a squealing rabbit or flapping bird.

You'll notice that I haven't mentioned the RWS #10 cartridge much yet. Whether it has any use in this country really depends on which of the various schools of thought you subscribe to and at this point, I'm not qualified to comment except to tell you what they are.

The age old debate about using #7½ or #6 shot for pigeons that we have on here every now and again is really a shadow of a much more important argument over cartridge choice in small bore guns and if the .410 hints at it, the 9mm shows it up in spades.

Essentially, the argument is over whether it's best to drive a few, big pellets straight through the bird in the hope of killing it quickly via destruction of organs or major blood loss, or whether it's best to shower it with as many tiny shot as possible in the hope of hitting some part of the central nervous system and killing it instantly in the one sense, whilst recognising that it takes a few seconds for the heart to stop beating / blood to stop pumping afterwards if the CNS is all that is hit.

It is my strong suspicion that, whilst asking the question about 12 gauge is like asking angels to dance on the head of a pin, the same argument in the very small bores actually exposes two "islands" of performance between which the "compromise cartridge" is not as effective as either of the "extremes". In layman's terms, I suspect that, although pellet energy is exceptionally low, even at the muzzle, the RWS #10 cartridge (or even the #11 equivalent) would probably exceed most peoples' expectations of lethality because the chances of a CNS strike are substantial in a small and very dense pattern and the skull of the average small critter is so thin that even those tiny pellets would break through to kill.

At the other end of the scale, if you chose to go down the "drive big pellets through it" route, then you have to go all the way and use the very biggest shot you can. Ok - you only have 60 pellets in the cartridge and most people would call using what is the equivalent of #5½ English in a .410 pretty crazy (I certainly do), let alone in a cartridge holding half the quantity of shot, but again, with the dense pattern and an aimed shot, you probably would drive 2-3 pellets through something important and kill the target that way.

In the middle though - with a #8 cartridge, say - you have neither the pellet energy required to drive the shot through the target, nor the pattern density to be reasonably sure of hitting the head or neck. The result is quarry wounded every time. I think that the .410 hints at this too and though I've always been too scared of injuring birds to actually shoot at them with - for example - 14g/#9 - the anecdotes I've read do seem to support what I'm suggesting.

Beyond that, I'm not sure. They're generally quiet and being surrounded by trees (i.e. in an actual garden or wood) makes a big difference to how much noise you hear. In a field, it's pretty comfortable without ear defenders in a way that no other shotgun is. Surrounded by trees, you get a lot of sound reflected back, but it's still tolerable and that probably means most isn't escaping elsewhere to annoy the neighbours.

I intend to keep playing around with it and buying whatever cartridges I can find. I did have a chance to buy a box of the RWS #10 shells last weekend, but at nearly £20/box with no actual use for them and other guns to feed, I left it. If there's interest in doing some more testing, I'll reconsider spending the money. I'm definitely still finding out about it though, so consider all of the above "working conclusions" until I can either do some more testing and some more research.

[stuartyboy]

Thank you for your very detailed reply. Its very interesting and informative. Im sure many others will find it useful too. I'm looking forward to picking up my 9mm garden gun and experimenting with cartridges and patterns before trying to get a few rats with it.

Thank you for your very detailed reply. Its very interesting and informative. Im sure many others will find it useful too. I'm looking forward to picking up my 9mm garden gun and experimenting with cartridges and patterns before trying to get a few rats with it.

[Hamster]

 

I hesitate to state a number as I've never pointed one at live game and don't intend to do so in future, but I would think somewhere between 12-15 yards for normal small / medium UK quarry on the basis of what I've seen so far.

I've patterned the Fiocchi #6 (IT) and #7½ (IT) cartridges and a very small number of the RWS #10 loading.

The #6 cartridge and to a lesser extent the #7½, I would probably trust to "rifle-shoot" pigeons, small rabbits and any smaller species at the distances I've specified above. I mean "rifle-shoot" in the sense of taking aimed shots at stationary or near-stationary targets. In that sense, the 9mm Flobert cartridge really is what many people believe the .410 to be.

Neither cartridge is really suitable for moving game and although I've done a lot of work elsewhere, for example, to produce evidence for the .410 being a perfectly good gun for wingéd / fast-moving targets, I am defeated by the 9mm - it just isn't capable of it, except by relying almost entirely on luck, which renders it inhumane. Unlike the .410, where there is a range of cartridge effectiveness, from the truly awful (most 2" / 2½" loadings; many continental cartridges) to the basically capable (e.g. the better 2½" / 3" loadings), the 9mm doesn't have either the range of ammunition (to allow for cartridges more or less suited to the individual firearm) or the inherent capacity to work with.

To put it in it's proper place, I'd consider the 2" .410 loadings, collectively, as being capable out to around 20 yards - whether limited by pellet energy or pattern - and the 9mm is the next logical step downward as you'd expect. A 2" .410 round might only produce 900-1000fps at the muzzle; the 9mm is in the region of 600-700fps. That 2" .410 round loaded with #9 shot will give about the same individual pellet energy at 15 yards as a 9mm cartridge loaded with Italian #6, give or take. There's not that much between them ballistically: a gap, certainly and the 9mm usually comes off worse, but it's not as big as you might expect. To counter: how many people regularly rely on 2" .410 cartridges?

There are some special considerations with the garden gun however.

Almost certainly due to the muzzle velocity being around half of "normal" shotgun velocity, garden gun patters are noticeably smaller, with fewer fliers than the equivalent "normal" pattern at any given distance. That means that, although the overall pattern is smaller, the density within the pattern area will usually be equivalent to a cartridge with a much higher number of pellets. The 56 pellets we saw in the 20" circle for one of the 20-yard patterns using the Fiocchi #6 cartridge is theoretically equivalent to around 120-130 pellets in a 30" circle. That's a sparse pattern for pigeon, but it would probably do the job most of the time and the energy is there too. Knock a few yards off that and you can see why it's called a garden gun - it would probably knock over the woodies rummaging around your feeders which you've intended for smaller, prettier songbirds.

The other thing is that you have to take the velocity of the shot into consideration. Even in 5-yard pattern tests, it's possible to hear two distinct noises - that of the shot, and that of the pellets going through the paper / card. By the time you get out to 20 yards, you're getting the kind of delay you'd expect from an "ordinary" cartridge at 45-50 yards. That should emphasize the point about aimed shots and stationary targets - there's a real risk that even a small deviation off target would leave you with a squealing rabbit or flapping bird.

You'll notice that I haven't mentioned the RWS #10 cartridge much yet. Whether it has any use in this country really depends on which of the various schools of thought you subscribe to and at this point, I'm not qualified to comment except to tell you what they are.

The age old debate about using #7½ or #6 shot for pigeons that we have on here every now and again is really a shadow of a much more important argument over cartridge choice in small bore guns and if the .410 hints at it, the 9mm shows it up in spades.

Essentially, the argument is over whether it's best to drive a few, big pellets straight through the bird in the hope of killing it quickly via destruction of organs or major blood loss, or whether it's best to shower it with as many tiny shot as possible in the hope of hitting some part of the central nervous system and killing it instantly in the one sense, whilst recognising that it takes a few seconds for the heart to stop beating / blood to stop pumping afterwards if the CNS is all that is hit.

It is my strong suspicion that, whilst asking the question about 12 gauge is like asking angels to dance on the head of a pin, the same argument in the very small bores actually exposes two "islands" of performance between which the "compromise cartridge" is not as effective as either of the "extremes". In layman's terms, I suspect that, although pellet energy is exceptionally low, even at the muzzle, the RWS #10 cartridge (or even the #11 equivalent) would probably exceed most peoples' expectations of lethality because the chances of a CNS strike are substantial in a small and very dense pattern and the skull of the average small critter is so thin that even those tiny pellets would break through to kill.

At the other end of the scale, if you chose to go down the "drive big pellets through it" route, then you have to go all the way and use the very biggest shot you can. Ok - you only have 60 pellets in the cartridge and most people would call using what is the equivalent of #5½ English in a .410 pretty crazy (I certainly do), let alone in a cartridge holding half the quantity of shot, but again, with the dense pattern and an aimed shot, you probably would drive 2-3 pellets through something important and kill the target that way.

In the middle though - with a #8 cartridge, say - you have neither the pellet energy required to drive the shot through the target, nor the pattern density to be reasonably sure of hitting the head or neck. The result is quarry wounded every time. I think that the .410 hints at this too and though I've always been too scared of injuring birds to actually shoot at them with - for example - 14g/#9 - the anecdotes I've read do seem to support what I'm suggesting.

Beyond that, I'm not sure. They're generally quiet and being surrounded by trees (i.e. in an actual garden or wood) makes a big difference to how much noise you hear. In a field, it's pretty comfortable without ear defenders in a way that no other shotgun is. Surrounded by trees, you get a lot of sound reflected back, but it's still tolerable and that probably means most isn't escaping elsewhere to annoy the neighbours.

I intend to keep playing around with it and buying whatever cartridges I can find. I did have a chance to buy a box of the RWS #10 shells last weekend, but at nearly £20/box with no actual use for them and other guns to feed, I left it. If there's interest in doing some more testing, I'll reconsider spending the money. I'm definitely still finding out about it though, so consider all of the above "working conclusions" until I can either do some more testing and some more research.

 

 

Outstanding post, easily worthy of gracing the pages of a shooting magazine and all for free.

 

Thank you.

[neutron619]

 

Outstanding post, easily worthy of gracing the pages of a shooting magazine and all for free.

 

Thank you.

 

That's kind of you to say - thank you. I hope it'll be of use when the odd soul, like myself, turns up looking for something on them in future.

 

Pietro Fiocchi used to say that the .410 was the smallest bore size with which one could seriously hunt. I believe he was right, but there is (or perhaps was) a place for the 9mm in the stable. I didn't mention songbirds / migratory birds above, but I suspect the #10 cartridges probably had a place there in the past too. Perhaps now - Falco still produce double guns bored in 8mm and 9mm rimfire! My knowledge on that particular practice is even thinner however!

Edited November 1, 2017 by neutron619

[Rimfireboy]

Great post neutron. I’ve shot rats and a couple of squirrels with rws #10 Flobert shells and they do work. These have been probably no more than ten yards though. As for price, I payed £8.99 box of 50 for rws#10 last time I bought any, last year I think. And as you say, aimed shots are the way to go with these.

[Continental Shooter]

From direct experience i can say anything within 15 mt should be fine, bigger quarry might need to be shot in the vitals so, helps if it's stationary but if you are a good gun, then yes, you can take quarry flying ...

 

I use to shot doves with #8 (IT) on feeders at 20 mt but i have my reservation about pigeons (even with #6) at that distance especially in winter plumage.

 

Other pests like rat are fine at 20 mt even with #9 pellets

 

I never shot factory made cartridges; probably had the same brass ones for decades; however, hours produced very tight patterns at 25+ yds but were reloaded with very slow powders and my grandpa homemade wad.

 

Would be interesting to know what powder in on today's cartridges as, with a little practice, you can get a very good shell for your pest

[neutron619]

From direct experience i can say anything within 15 mt should be fine, bigger quarry might need to be shot in the vitals so, helps if it's stationary but if you are a good gun, then yes, you can take quarry flying ...

 

I use to shot doves with #8 (IT) on feeders at 20 mt but i have my reservation about pigeons (even with #6) at that distance especially in winter plumage.

 

Other pests like rat are fine at 20 mt even with #9 pellets

 

I never shot factory made cartridges; probably had the same brass ones for decades; however, hours produced very tight patterns at 25+ yds but were reloaded with very slow powders and my grandpa homemade wad.

 

Would be interesting to know what powder in on today's cartridges as, with a little practice, you can get a very good shell for your pest

 

Ok - I'm going to have to add my voice to the question above: how do you reload rimfire cartridges? Or do you actually "load" rather than "reload" them by buying the primed cases, then fill them up?

 

Ignoring questions of effectiveness, I'd still be reluctant to shoot flying game with my own 9mm. The gun weighs only a little over 2lbs and I doubt I'm a good enough shot to control a gun that light well enough to shoot accurately.

 

Still - very enjoyable to investigate and I'll continue. The powder in the Fiocchi shells is an extremely fine black ball powder - but there's hardly any of it. Probably only a couple of grains, but very hard to tell. It goes everywhere when you try to burn it off on a teaspoon - and don't ever sneeze anywhere near it!

[Continental Shooter]

I used to have brass shell where Fiocchi 615 would fit; then we had some sort of black powder and a fixed measuring spoon (sorry can't be more precise, it was grandpa stash).

 

You would use a full spoon of powder, add some cardboard wadding and a full spoon of pellets; in winter you'd use whatever more powder/pellets you could get over the spoon's rim to give it the extra kick needed in cold temps.

 

To be entirely fair, i haven't shot it since i started off with my own gun so, that might be some years ago and i only recall 1 flying shot on a thrush coming in at full speed with the wind in its ars3 i Bremen seeing it flying into the string of pellets and just puffing up in the air. As a youngster i was overjoyed and to be hones i made quite an impact on the older shooters... looking at it now, i can see why.

 

Can you get me some pics of the powder; just curiosity but by the sound of it it could be GM3 to the tune of 0.10-0.17 for the 7 g range; i also rememebr using some SIPE for 8-8.5 g payload

[Blackpowder]

I think sometime before on this forum I have mentioned my first day,'shooting' when I bowled over a hare stone dead with my trusty Acme 9mm or number 3 bore garden gun, perhaps accounted for a pheasant also that day. The Fiochii cartridges were a great advance on the Eley paper cases where the paper from the case discharged through the barrel and you only ejected the copper head. Pretty dangerous among straw or hay would be a tube of smoldering cartridge paper.

 

Blackpowder

[neutron619]

Well I put another post up here last night and it got destroyed by the forum upgrade, so I'll try to reconstruct it.

The short of it was to say thank you Continental Shooter for his reply and to say that the black powder in the shells looks a lot like FFFFG or pyrodex (though I'm sure it isn't). The nearest thing I can think of to identify it was the stuff I found in some of the Fiocchi 3" loadings and Hull High Pheasant cartridge. I'd have to check back on the other thread to see what that was - SP3 maybe?

The other thing I added to the thread (before the forum upgrade chomped it) was a few more garden gun patterns, this time with the Fiocchi #6 (IT) cartridge. I said above that I thought I'd trust either the #6 or #7½ cartridge for aimed short-range shooting, but I think I'm going to add a heavier note of scepticism regarding the #6 cartridge in light of the patterns I shot on Saturday.

Thr first significant discovery from this weekend's testing is that the initial pellet counts in the #6 cartridge are extremely variable. Having shot and counted the 5-yard patterns, where we can be reasonably confident that every pellet that was in the cartridge went through the cardboard, we had pellet counts of 47, 50, 54 and 58. Curious, we then pulled apart a larger number of shells and counted them, which gave us an average of 58 pellets in the cartridge, with a range of 46-63. That's a huge variation - equivalent to around 100 pellets in an ordinary 28g/#7½ clay cartridge!

When one considers the size of the #6 shot compared to the size of the case and the shape of the case mouth, it becomes reasonably straightforward to imagine that a shot drop from a machine, done at speed, might cause the shot column to fall awkwardly and leave air gaps where there should be pellets. On a larger scale, this is why one tends to hand-load buckshot-type sizes in the bigger bores: to ensure that the pellets are packed evenly. Clearly Fiocchi aren't going to hand-pack 60 pellets, so this variation is probably the price you pay for having factory ammunition at all. I imagine that it's a lot less of a problem with the smaller shot sizes.

Addressing again the question of lethality, I've little doubt that the #6 pellets will kill at short range if they actually hit the quarry, but the quality of some of the patterns - particularly the 15- and 20-yard ones - really leaves a lot to be desired. There are more than enough gaps (or looked at another way, the areas which are covered by each count of 10 pellets are large enough) that it would be perfectly possible to aim a shot, be "on target" and still have no single pellet impact the bird.

In fact, I believe that's what happened when a wood pigeon landed nearby during testing. We were shooting cardboard plates in my relative's garden / "home farm" (we do meet the requirements of the general licence under the provisions of crop protection, just for the record) and the bird landed close enough, on the other side of a low hedge, that it should have been in range. There was no rush to take the shot and it was carefully aimed, but the bird flew off, apparently surprised but entirely unharmed.

Whether this was because the pattern “covered” the bird but no pellet struck, or because the pattern was simply too small to allow for any error in aiming, is not clear, but there appears to be so much "luck" involved in using a 9mm that I'm really struggling to pin down what cartridge would give the best chance of success.

It may be that the 9mm simply isn't reliable enough to take anything other than rats on a regular basis. Between 0-10 yards, the pattern is so small that even the smallest deviation in aiming can result in a miss - and lets face it - garden guns are not rifles and because of the wad, do not always throw their shot to exactly the same spot anyway. Between 10-15 yards appears to be the "sweet spot" where pattern is wide enough to hit but not so sparse that quarry can escape through it. Past 15 yards, the larger shot sizes leave gaps which make hitting any given spot a matter of luck whilst the smaller sizes lack the required energy to reliably penetrate fur / feather / bone.

So my "working conclusion" remains broadly the same - two islands of performance dependent on "CNS" or "drive them through" approaches, with #8 and #9 in the middle probably best avoided. Added to that, I'd now hazard a guess that #7½ may be more effective than #6 and the observe that the tightness of patterns created by low muzzle velocity actually handicap the user by requiring a much greater degree of accuracy at precisely the ranges the 9mm ought to be most effective.

In short, I suspect that we'll probably resort to using a .410 to keep the pigeons off the winter crops in the vicinity of the house. It'll be a lot noisier, but a scared wood pigeon makes a much less interesting meal and a much worse pest than a dead one.

Herefollow the best of the patterns from Saturday's testing.

Fiocchi "Flobert" 7g/#6 @ 10 Yards (Circle = 20"):

Fiocchi "Flobert" 7g/#6 @ 15 Yards (Circle = 20"):

Fiocchi "Flobert" 7g/#6 @ 20 Yards (Circle = 20"):

Edited November 6, 2017 by neutron619

[TIGHTCHOKE]

Neutron619 aka the Pigeon Surpriser!

[Continental Shooter]

Hey,

my notes are for GM3 and Sipe but that was 25 years ago or more; I would have thought that these days they would use .410, SP3 and slowest possible powders to get some load going  but my friends who still use it are confirming for the 8mm they still use the SIPE, S4 and GM3 to launch up to 9g (in a 44mm hull).

It might be different in the 9mm due to the use of small pistol primer, although i would have thought the other way round.  Shame you can't reload these hulls, otherwise a duplex with mixed pellets could ahve helped filling in the voids and guaranteeing a better pattern.

Out of curiosity, with the 8mm my friends are shooting magpies and crows up to 15 mt (#7 shots); looking at the patterns above, i can see that they are decent; but not knowing the powder, pressure, speed or penetration is difficult to judge.  I might have to buy an 8mm myself and try out some load