No7 s ?

[wymberley]

15 minutes ago, motty said:

Of course they do the job. At 25-30 yards you could just as easily use an ounce of nines.

And there'd be enough to guarantee a head shot instead of it being pure chance.

[aga man]

I like to use Italian trap cartridges whenever I can get them. Far cheaper than those made here in Hull too.

[Ultrastu]

I have a  1/2 fixed choke mossy .with the barrel porting isnt very effective with standard no 7.5 even at 25 yds .so i shoot heavier  lead. 5 and 6 s and try and take birds around the 35 yd area where the pattern has opened up a bit and i can hit pigeons. This leaves the close in fast moving birds hard to hit with the slow tight ish hushpower mossy .and when i do hit them they are smoke. So with my relativley new ou .I decided i want a fast moving gun with a wide pattern ideal for closer birds that when hit doesnt turn the bird into cream cheese .

So ive been shooting it with cylinder  and 1/4chokes  or 1/4 and 1/4 

And trying the samller 7.5s. Like i said above the hull 7.5 s are ok up to 25 yds 

But get a bird at 35 and they have been walking away .with both chokes .

These bornaghni carts seem to be the ideal ballance for what im trying to do ..

I have 3 guns i dont need all three to do the same thing. They each fullfill different rolls. The mossy hush will now be a crow gun .using mainly no5 .for that slower and higher flying bird .

Cheers all .

Edited July 22, 2019 by Ultrastu

[Walker570]

another quip from my grandfather was "tail tail tail   fail fail fail.  He shot from the hip because of an injury but rarely missed even on the many driven grey partridge we had back then.  The go to cartridge was #5 Grand Prix if you could get them or anything left over from the Home Guard.  #9s where like gold and reserved for house sparrows in the mixing yard.

His other comment when showing me how to shoot was, "Look at the bird".   If you play darts you don't have ansi fansi illuminating front sights on your finger. You do it instictively.

Edited July 22, 2019 by Walker570

[Whitebridges]

13 hours ago, figgy said:

Bornaghi were the best carts in 28 bore too.

Yes indeed figgy. I've still got a few boxes left.

[Whitebridges]

8 hours ago, London Best said:

Yeah, 7’s are deadly on pigeon. Far more clean kills than if you use 5’s where half the birds are walking about with broken wings.

Utter tosh my friend. Perhaps you'll explain your reasoning? 

[London Best]

Pattern.

And 60 years experience.

[Stonepark]

13 minutes ago, Whitebridges said:

Utter tosh my friend. Perhaps you'll explain your reasoning? 

Giving a simple example (and without going into statistics or pattern distribution analysis) for one shot only taken at a pigeon,

At 40 yards, 28g No7 has 184 pellets in 30 inch circle with 1/4 choke, hence a 20 square inch area pigeon  (of which 5 sq inch is vitals) will be hit with at least 5 pellets which in simple terms mean a kill as there is a 1 in 4 chance of pellets hitting a vital spot and as a shotgun is random, the calculated kill ratio (chance of any one pellet hitting something vital) is 25% plus 25% plus 25% plus 25% plus 25% (Total 125%) and being greater than 100% should result in a kill every time in theory.

With 28g No 5 you have 120 pellets in 30 inch circle with 1/4 choke,  hitting a pigeon with only 3 pellets of which 1 may hit something vital. calculated as 15% plus 15% plus 15% (Total 45%), so only a kill just over half the time the remainder resulting in injury and having to be dispatched if the pellets are evenly distributed.

In reality as most patterns have a hotter core with pellets being split 60:40 between inner 20 inch circle and outer 20 to 30 inch circle, both cartridges perform better at 40 yards if centred on target than suggested above, 175% for the No 7 load and 80% for the No5.

Now to look at the larger picture and given the accuracy (or lack there of) in shooting would that 1 in 5 be noticable to most shooters or would it be put down to aim not being perfect and how much does the 2nd barrel cover up when fired at the same bird, assuming that 80% of the injured birds are killed by second shot resulting in a 96% kill rate in total for the No5 loading over two shots at same target assuming aim is correct.

 

 

[Ultrastu]

Sounds convincing .

Certainly all the birds i hit yesterday with the 7s were very dead in the air .including the crow .

Cant always say that with no 5s 

But then 1 box of 25 is hardley a big enough  trail .

Thanks for the info stone park 

 

[Hamster]

9 hours ago, Stonepark said:

Giving a simple example (and without going into statistics or pattern distribution analysis) for one shot only taken at a pigeon,

At 40 yards, 28g No7 has 184 pellets in 30 inch circle with 1/4 choke, hence a 20 square inch area pigeon  (of which 5 sq inch is vitals) will be hit with at least 5 pellets which in simple terms mean a kill as there is a 1 in 4 chance of pellets hitting a vital spot and as a shotgun is random, the calculated kill ratio (chance of any one pellet hitting something vital) is 25% plus 25% plus 25% plus 25% plus 25% (Total 125%) and being greater than 100% should result in a kill every time in theory.

With 28g No 5 you have 120 pellets in 30 inch circle with 1/4 choke,  hitting a pigeon with only 3 pellets of which 1 may hit something vital. calculated as 15% plus 15% plus 15% (Total 45%), so only a kill just over half the time the remainder resulting in injury and having to be dispatched if the pellets are evenly distributed.

In reality as most patterns have a hotter core with pellets being split 60:40 between inner 20 inch circle and outer 20 to 30 inch circle, both cartridges perform better at 40 yards if centred on target than suggested above, 175% for the No 7 load and 80% for the No5.

Now to look at the larger picture and given the accuracy (or lack there of) in shooting would that 1 in 5 be noticable to most shooters or would it be put down to aim not being perfect and how much does the 2nd barrel cover up when fired at the same bird, assuming that 80% of the injured birds are killed by second shot resulting in a 96% kill rate in total for the No5 loading over two shots at same target assuming aim is correct.

 

 

Good post, the other way to judge these things is of course via actual shooting and every time I do so (because I keep reading tales of the deadliness of 5's) I end up being disappointed. Anything can give instant, impressive kills when centred and when the distance is within the effective parameters of a cartridge, I know of friends who ran out of Winchester Trap 100 and switched to 9's with good results ! 

The trouble as always is that "pattern fails before penetration", it is just not possible to centre everything all the time,  in clay shooting as well as pigeon, we rely on a good bit of our kills being made by the patterns fringes. I've had some stunning fold kills with 3/4 choke and 5's, I've also had some fairly inexplicable "misses" with the same size through 1/2 choke ! The trouble with shooting big shot is that it encourages people to go for shots that aren't really "on" as such, I personally tend to notice a definite increase in runners and birds that fall some 300 yards from the firing point. By contrast 7's (and 6.5's) can still give some fairly spectacular distance kills (without encouraging you to take wishful pot shots) and provide better density at normal decoying range. 

Edited July 23, 2019 by Hamster

[Guest cookoff013]

what are you guys on about?

you do know that a #7 pellet can drift either side, for a classification of that size, thats a 50/50 mix of 7.5s and 6.5s that would be the extreme case but still classed as #7. 

theoretically if you have a shell with say 350 pieces of #7 vs 350 pieces of #5 you cant really argue % gains, one could argue that #12 shot is 1000 times better that even #7. 

 

shot sizes of #6 and #5 are traditional sporting cartridges for birds, (i`m not discounting 4s,3s,2s, or 1s. but this is the context of "pigeon").

the sporting is distance, from flightline and or decoy. 

[JDog]

My own experiences with using no.7 and 7 1/2 shot have been poor. Similar to other activities where a brain is needed it may have been all in the mind but I distinctly remember having less clean kills at normal decoying ranges than with my normal no.6 shot.

My intention is to give these smaller shot sizes another go though their effectiveness may be reduced by my gun’s relatively open fixed chokes.

Edited July 23, 2019 by JDog

[London Best]

Just come in. Been out this morning and shot 24 corvids. 18 carrion crows and 6 jackdaws picked. W. Richards double hammer .410. Eley trap 2 1/2 inch shooting a half ounce, 14 gram, of 7 1/2s. Three from the 24 were not dead on ground contact, but going nowhere. Both barrels on the gun measure .410 at the muzzle.

[Hamster]

22 minutes ago, cookoff013 said:

what are you guys on about?

you do know that a #7 pellet can drift either side, for a classification of that size, thats a 50/50 mix of 7.5s and 6.5s that would be the extreme case but still classed as #7. 

theoretically if you have a shell with say 350 pieces of #7 vs 350 pieces of #5 you cant really argue % gains, one could argue that #12 shot is 1000 times better that even #7. 

 

shot sizes of #6 and #5 are traditional sporting cartridges for birds, (i`m not discounting 4s,3s,2s, or 1s. but this is the context of "pigeon").

the sporting is distance, from flightline and or decoy. 

7's are sevens, yes it's is true that a poorly made shell with inadequate quality control would likely have  pellets that vary in size but if you know what you're doing and care to open up a sample or two then it's perfectly possible to find factory loaded 7's the majority of which are to all intents and purposes 2.4mm. 

I have to re-iterate that my own preference for the shot size is for decoyed birds and I tend to use 1/2+ choke, having said that I have shot some high (50 yards or so) "flighting" pigeon with 7.5's and found them to be effective through 1/2 and 3/4. 

[wymberley]

9 hours ago, Stonepark said:

Giving a simple example (and without going into statistics or pattern distribution analysis) for one shot only taken at a pigeon,

At 40 yards, 28g No7 has 184 pellets in 30 inch circle with 1/4 choke, hence a 20 square inch area pigeon  (of which 5 sq inch is vitals) will be hit with at least 5 pellets which in simple terms mean a kill as there is a 1 in 4 chance of pellets hitting a vital spot and as a shotgun is random, the calculated kill ratio (chance of any one pellet hitting something vital) is 25% plus 25% plus 25% plus 25% plus 25% (Total 125%) and being greater than 100% should result in a kill every time in theory.

With 28g No 5 you have 120 pellets in 30 inch circle with 1/4 choke,  hitting a pigeon with only 3 pellets of which 1 may hit something vital. calculated as 15% plus 15% plus 15% (Total 45%), so only a kill just over half the time the remainder resulting in injury and having to be dispatched if the pellets are evenly distributed.

In reality as most patterns have a hotter core with pellets being split 60:40 between inner 20 inch circle and outer 20 to 30 inch circle, both cartridges perform better at 40 yards if centred on target than suggested above, 175% for the No 7 load and 80% for the No5.

Now to look at the larger picture and given the accuracy (or lack there of) in shooting would that 1 in 5 be noticable to most shooters or would it be put down to aim not being perfect and how much does the 2nd barrel cover up when fired at the same bird, assuming that 80% of the injured birds are killed by second shot resulting in a 96% kill rate in total for the No5 loading over two shots at same target assuming aim is correct.

 

 

 Seems they're getting bigger. Burrard carefully measured the vulnerable area (plucked) at 16 sq ins.

[Smokersmith]

Well we had 1 meter long pheasants in the famous high bird thread !! 

[Ultrastu]

Sad act that i am .

Ive been measuring  and counting pellets .

The so called  2.4 mm pellets in those bornaghi carts are really consistent from between 2.41 mm -2.45 mm 

With many reading exactly  2.43 mm 

Counted them at 325 for an ounce .

Next up was some gamebore black gold 5s .these came in at an average of 3 mm so actually a uk no4 . Not the 2.8 mm they should be. 

I also measured  some italian  nsi no6 s 

These are supposed to be 2.7 mm and did average around that number .

Last was a hull cart 7.5 and these were also very consistent at around 2.32 mm 

Hope this is interesting .

 

 

[Hamster]

👍

[wymberley]

14 minutes ago, Ultrastu said:

Sad act that i am .

Ive been measuring  and counting pellets .

The so called  2.4 mm pellets in those bornaghi carts are really consistent from between 2.41 mm -2.45 mm 

With many reading exactly  2.43 mm 

Counted them at 325 for an ounce .

Next up was some gamebore black gold 5s .these came in at an average of 3 mm so actually a uk no4 . Not the 2.8 mm they should be. 

I also measured  some italian  nsi no6 s 

These are supposed to be 2.7 mm and did average around that number .

Last was a hull cart 7.5 and these were also very consistent at around 2.32 mm 

Hope this is interesting .

 

 

Have a look at Gamebore's website. These are Diamond Shot and as such are one size up.

[Ultrastu]

Yes .i guess they start at 2.8mm and then after coating end up as 3 mm