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Actual difference between cartridges


jbk
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I'm struggling to make a decision on cartridge product choice on anything other than branding, name, price and whether I had a previous good days shooting with the cartridge or not.

Can someone help me understand the actual differences between brands cartridge products, e.g. Eley VIP game £309/1000 and Eley hi-flyer £274/1000. Currently I'd be tempted to just by the cheaper cartridge, but what is the actual difference?

For context I shoot 25% Pigeon, 70% clay and 5% driven Pheasant, in terms of cartridge through gun volume of shooting and I try to get 8-15 days of shooting in per year. I'd just like to find a cartridge that I can trust, can stick with, fibre only and without having to spend days on a pattern plate which surely must have been done on the cartridges before anyway. I shoot 20 bore o/u most of the time and for the occasional day crack out the 12guage s/s game gun.

From Eley's website:

VIP Game 20bore:

LOAD SHOT SIZE WADDING VELOCITY POWDER BRASS LENGTH CASE LENGTH
28 5, 6 fibre Muzzle Velocity 413 mps
Muzzle Velocity 1356 fps
PSB 3 16mm 67 mm
2 1/2" inches

Hi-Flyer 20bore:

LOAD SHOT SIZE WADDING VELOCITY POWDER BRASS LENGTH CASE LENGTH
28 5, 6 Fibre Muzzle Velocity 361 mps
Muzzle Velocity 1186 fps
CSB 2 8 70 mm
2 3/4 inches

 

So does a higher price cartridge usually correlate with a higher quality I wonder? And is a general rule I guess you should stick with a cartridge with roughly the same velocity so as not to cause any lead adjustment?

 

 

 

 

Edited by jbk
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25 minutes ago, oldypigeonpopper said:

hello, why get bogged down in all this, so 95% is clays and pigeon, use a cheap 7.5s 28g fibre, 5% pheasant use 30g 6 shot fibre,  if you have screw chokes just use one appropriate

Because I'm not happy with the quality of my shooting, so I'm trying to improve it, and to help that I'm trying to eliminate as many of the variables as possible. I accept that by far the biggest factor is my performance of course and not the equipment. I've got a shooting lesson booked, I've bought a skotkam so I can analyse my shooting (and as a fun toy, arrives next week can't wait!), have bought a membership at my local clay ground as commitment to regular shooting and I'd like to understand the cartridge variable better than I do so that I can be sure I'm not adding to any of my shooting difficulties by always shooting different cartridges all the time just because they're priced cheaper.

No concerns on cartridge for those easy 20 yarders dropping into the decoy pattern, it's more the tougher flukey / faster 30-60 yarders which I'd like to connect more reliably with and kill not wing. If the answer is that I'll not notice a difference, then great I'll just buy whatever is cheaper/reasonably priced and job done, but if different cartridges will be affect my shooting (a bit) I'd rather eliminate the variable, try to stick with the same good appropriate quality cartridge, buy 1000s of the things and never think about it again. 

Edited by jbk
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7 minutes ago, jbk said:

Because I'm not happy with the quality of my shooting, so I'm trying to improve it, and to help that I'm trying to eliminate as many of the variables as possible. I accept that by far the biggest factor my performance of course and not the equipment. I've got a shooting lesson booked, I've bought a skotkam so I can analyse my shooting (and as a fun toy, arrives next week can't wait!), have bought a membership at my local clay ground as commitment to regular shooting and I'd like to understand the cartridge variable better than I do so that I can be sure I'm not adding to any of my shooting difficulties by always shooting different cartridges all the time just because they're priced cheaper.

No concerns on cartridge for those easy 20 yarders dropping into the decoy pattern, it's more the tougher flukey / faster 30-60 yarders which I'd like to connect more reliably with and kill not wing. If the answer is that I'll not notice a difference, then great I'll just buy whatever is cheaper/reasonably priced and job done, but if different cartridges will be affect my shooting I'd rather eliminate the variable, try to stick with the same good appropriate quality cartridge, buy 1000s of the things and never think about it again. 

hello, sorry i missed you have a 20g, although it would still be the same

Edited by oldypigeonpopper
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6 minutes ago, oldypigeonpopper said:

hello, sorry i missed you have a 20g, although it would still be the same

yes no worries, all the same anyway. I actually shoot a 20bore o/u Beretta Silver Pigeon for most of my stuff. But I have a 12bore side by side Joseph Lang gun that I love, have supposedly had fitted to me, but I'm not too confident about that (feels like stock been shortened too much, feels weird in comparison to my u/o). I occasionally crack the old game gun out, but mainly I'm talking about shooting through my 20bore Silver pidg and I'm using that as the main tool to get my shooting better with.

15 minutes ago, Farmboy91 said:

I'm not a fan of Eley at all, but when I brought my last sxs I was given a box of 28g no6 VIP and was well impressed. After that I used them through the O/U too, soft shooting, even pattern can't ask for much more than that.

soft shooting as in lower recoil do you mean? Re. the even pattern do you shoot / have you shot enough that you can just recognise this in your shooting, or do you actually pattern plate your cartridges?

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As far i'm concerned i'm not good enough to tell the difference, if my gun goes bang that will do for me, if i hit some clays, or a pigeon fall out of the sky its a Brucy Bonus. 

 

 

Maybe, if i thought i was amazing, i would shoot more expensive cartridges to make me think i was having an off day. Or maybe the clays were rubbish. 

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13 minutes ago, jbk said:

yes no worries, all the same anyway. I actually shoot a 20bore o/u Beretta Silver Pigeon for most of my stuff. But I have a 12bore side by side Joseph Lang gun that I love, have supposedly had fitted to me, but I'm not too confident about that (feels like stock been shortened too much, feels weird in comparison to my u/o). I occasionally crack the old game gun out, but mainly I'm talking about shooting through my 20bore Silver pidg and I'm using that as the main tool to get my shooting better with.

soft shooting as in lower recoil do you mean? Re. the even pattern do you shoot / have you shot enough that you can just recognise this in your shooting, or do you actually pattern plate your cartridges?

Yeah lower recoil, I had an aya no.4 and still have a Beretta s686, neither of which are heavy guns but the VIP's are comfortable too shoot in both. I put a couple across a pattern plate through the Beretta with half choke after using them on the pigeon for a while and it too me confirmed what was going on in the air.

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For my inexperienced head, can those in the know tell me. 

 

If you took 10 pattern plates with 10 of the same make cartridge, shoot all at the same distance, same shotgun, same choke, would you get 10 identical pattern plates ? 

 

I personally doubt it, yes they may be similar but i bet you still get an area that a clay could squeeze through on some of them. IF! that "is" the case then what is the next thing to change ? choke, shot gun or hobby ? 

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As ever it's down to confidence. You're quite right, if you don't know what the gun is doing you cannot have the necessary confidence in it. You have to start somewhere. 1356 ft/sec of No 6 is 638 at 40 yards and similarly, 1186 is 610. Forget it. It's pattern that kills anyway so just find something that patterns to your needs. Once that is sorted the rest is down to you.

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1 minute ago, wymberley said:

As ever it's down to confidence. You're quite right, if you don't know what the gun is doing you cannot have the necessary confidence in it. You have to start somewhere. 1356 ft/sec of No 6 is 638 at 40 yards and similarly, 1186 is 610. Forget it. It's pattern that kills anyway so just find something that patterns to your needs. Once that is sorted the rest is down to you.

Noted, so just find something that patterns reliably.

So back to what's the pattern reliability difference between a cartridge that prices at £260/1000 vs £320/1000. And or is my gun's choke more important than cartridge choice (standard Beretta choke tubes - 3 notch, 1/2, bottom barrel (1st pull) and 2 notch, 3/4, top barrel (2nd pull))?

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13 minutes ago, Dougy said:

For my inexperienced head, can those in the know tell me. 

 

If you took 10 pattern plates with 10 of the same make cartridge, shoot all at the same distance, same shotgun, same choke, would you get 10 identical pattern plates ? 

 

I personally doubt it, yes they may be similar but i bet you still get an area that a clay could squeeze through on some of them. IF! that "is" the case then what is the next thing to change ? choke, shot gun or hobby ? 

You're quite right which is why having fired "x" number of shots the average is taken to determine the density. You could go to the trouble of improving things by choosing the cartridge which gices the best SD or far more quickly use the old method of determining pattern quality

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3 minutes ago, wymberley said:

You're quite right which is why having fired "x" number of shots the average is taken to determine the density. You could go to the trouble of improving things by choosing the cartridge which gices the best SD or far more quickly used the old method of determining pattern quality

Thanks for that, i can keep on blaming the gap in the pattern then when i miss. 😂

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Taken from ShootingUk.co.uk article here:

"Speed isn’t everything in cartridge choice. Even with the fastest loads, the pellets are travelling at subsonic speeds only 20 feet or so from the muzzle.

Here’s something to think about: For a target crossing at right angles to the shooting position at a speed of 40mph and 30 yards distance, the difference in lead required for two cartridges that performance wise are 100fps apart (say the difference between 1375fps and 1475fps) is less than three inches.

When you think that your total pattern diameter is roughly 30 inches without taking into account the shot string effect, this is so small as to be virtually impossible to detect from the shooter’s point of view."

So this article answers most of my questions, sorry to bother you all without finding this first! 🙄 However it does still leave me with the question of why pay ~£100/1000 more for a cartridge, other than for purely psychological reasons!?

Edited by jbk
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20 minutes ago, jbk said:

Noted, so just find something that patterns reliably.

So back to what's the pattern reliability difference between a cartridge that prices at £260/1000 vs £320/1000. And or is my gun's choke more important than cartridge choice (standard Beretta choke tubes - 3 notch, 1/2, bottom barrel (1st pull) and 2 notch, 3/4, top barrel (2nd pull))?

No one can answer that question for certain for each and every gun made. How the shot presents itself down range is far more important than the irrelevance that is screwed into the end of your barrels. Once you have decided how many pellet strikes are needed to ensure either a clean kill or a broken clay then you need to find an average pattern density that can be reasonably expected to deliver that number on each and every shot.

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1 minute ago, Farmboy91 said:

It's not just psychological, that more expensive, faster cart is more like going to slap you that bit harder too.

Makes you wonder how those black powder boys knock anything down...

 

ok of course so velocity = carried energy. So if you want to a clean crow kill at 60yrds aside from pointing it in the right direction a faster cart will help better.

4 minutes ago, wymberley said:

No one can answer that question for certain for each and every gun made. How the shot presents itself down range is far more important than the irrelevance that is screwed into the end of your barrels. Once you have decided how many pellet strikes are needed to ensure either a clean kill or a broken clay then you need to find an average pattern density that can be reasonably expected to deliver that number on each and every shot.

ok so choke is irrelevant to pattern reliability, in terms of both the quality / brand of choke tubes and the degree of choke?

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10 minutes ago, jbk said:

Taken from ShootingUk.co.uk article here:

"Speed isn’t everything in cartridge choice. Even with the fastest loads, the pellets are travelling at subsonic speeds only 20 feet or so from the muzzle.

Here’s something to think about: For a target crossing at right angles to the shooting position at a speed of 40mph and 30 yards distance, the difference in lead required for two cartridges that performance wise are 100fps apart (say the difference between 1375fps and 1475fps) is less than three inches.

When you think that your total pattern diameter is roughly 30 inches without taking into account the shot string effect, this is so small as to be virtually impossible to detect from the shooter’s point of view."

Taking me back to the question of why pay ~£100/1000 more, other than for purely psychological reasons!?

The fact that the second and third points are a load of tosh does not detract from the validity of the first.

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JBK,

From reading your original post and subsequent additions, you have demonstrated you want to achieve consistancy. I would suggest leaving one gun or the other in the cabinet until you are happy with your shooting. I would also suggest as you apppear to be searching for, 1 cartridge that covers 99% of your shooting to a reasonable range.

12b is relatively easy, Gamebore Blue Diamond 28g 7.5 fibre clay cartridge will kill every clay and pigeon within 45 yards  and every pheasant within 40 yards with IC and 1/4 choke if you are on target, the cartidges are relatively soft to shoot, good speed, 3% antimony and sized as a UK No 7 (2.4mm) and not expensive.

The closest in 20b is Lyalvale Supreme Game, 28g No 7, however the offerings is even more skewed out of whack in 20b than 12b for a proper cartridge that is the optimum combination of pellet size, pellet number, pellet speed etc

I note your chokes are nominally 1/2 and 3/4, why? This minimises your pattern spread, meaning you are more likely to miss a bird or catch it with a flyer, resulting in an injured bird.

If you want to kill a crow clean at 60 yards, reliably (i.e. 99% of the time), you are going to need 1 7/8 (53g) No 5 through an Extra Full choke and even then you will be sparse on pellets.

With a normal load 32g or less, 45 yards is the reasonable maximium for any shotgun.

You should not be shooting at "flukey" birds, over 45 yards with a 20b there is no reason or justification as your 20b and carridge combnation is not up to it.

Edited by Stonepark
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6 minutes ago, jbk said:

ok of course so velocity = carried energy. So if you want to a clean crow kill at 60yrds aside from pointing it in the right direction a faster cart will help better.

ok so choke is irrelevant to pattern reliability, in terms of both the quality / brand of choke tubes and the degree of choke?

Yes, in the sense that we're talking about YOUR gun/s. The only sure way to obtain a reliable pattern which is to your requirement is to pattern the gun.

When I hit "quote" your first bullet point was not there. Yes, a faster cartridge would of course help but to do so it would mean a reasonable increase in speed downrange which would require a disproportional increase at the muzzle. Larger shot would be better. You've mentioned 60 yards Try a pattern test at that distance befopre you head out.

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