Festive Thoughts / Hull 20 Gauge 3" Load?

[neutron619]

Well then chaps. I've been amusing myself over the Christmas period by doing some reading about all sorts of things that our American cousins get up to over the pond, learning a lot about turkey hunting (seemed appropriate given the season), TSS and the way it's opened up the use of much smaller gauges (e.g. 20) for turkeys and indeed, for other quarry that they have over there.

Apparently, traditionally, for turkey, everyone's been banging off 3½" 12 gauge shells with a couple of ounces of small-ish shot in them and counting patterns in a 10" circle, but they're now replacing that with smaller loads of #9 TSS that still have 800-900 pellets in them. They're still head-shooting them in the usual way, but with much less sore shoulders (and much lighter wallets.) Very interesting stuff, although I do wonder whether the long-term effects of dropping tungsten all over the countryside are going to be any better than covering it with lead, given I seem to recall that tungsten is more reactive, horribly irritating to the skin and eyes and just as poisonous, if not moreso.

Anyway - all that got me onto thinking two things: first that there's hope for the .410 yet (assuming we're all willing to pay £3 per pop or whatever TSS costs) and second, that a 20 gauge would be a nice Christmas present to myself. So I ordered a Hatsan to play around with in the new year. Whilst doing my research, I found these:

(See: https://www.justcartridges.com/product/high-pheasant-extreme-steel-3-hp-20ga-2/)

Now, I can't personally see the point in those particular cartridges. It's hard to get a good enough pattern in a 12 gauge (e.g. 32g) load with a steel #4 that would do for duck, pheasant and and wood pigeon (i.e. a reasonable "all rounder") where the pattern still holds before the kinetic energy runs out*. A "balanced" cartridge, if you will. You certainly aren't getting closer to that if you drop the quantity of shot (28g in the cartridge above), although I daresay if you limited yourself to duck and pheasant, or filled it with steel #5's, you'd get on a lot better.

But my prejudices aside, this is a magnum, steel 20 gauge cartridge produced by a UK manufacturer, apparently beginning in 2022, and this post is to ask if anyone's seen any, used any, or knows how they perform either on paper in the field?

I know the Americans have had magnum "everything" for years, but now we're being pushed into steel it looks like Hull are starting to do some work on that sort of thing. What's weird is that there is literally no mention of them that I can find on their website - only JC list them, although I think Hull reference a 12 gauge cartridge with the same name. Nobody else seems to stock them or mention them on their price lists. My local shop has never heard of them.

I hasten to add, it's not that I particularly want to buy any / use them. But I am interested in the direction of travel, their performance, whether the "Hydrowad" works etc. I guess the closest thing is that we mostly use 3" shells in .410 these days and I wonder whether the 20 gauge will go the same way. 24g/#5 steel seems a reasonably balanced cartridge though - I'm not convinced of the need for these.

Anyway - all information, anecdotal or otherwise will be gratefully received.

 

* = I'd quite like to see some steel loadings that recognize the smaller numbers of steel pellets you can fit in the case. Maybe some 36g/#4 or 32g/#4½. #4 seems a good all-rounder like #6 lead, but the patterns always seem a little sparse by comparison.

[Stephen-H]

Hull did a YouTube video the other day with tgs ( Johnny Carter & sash ) hull will be doing a 20 gauge hull hydro game 3 inch cartridge for 20 bores in the coming months hopefully 

[Dave at kelton]

I can’t comment on these Hull shells but speaking to both them and Eley both are focusing on steel non plastic for the high pheasant boys. That seems to mean 3” loads for pattern density. Speaking to a pal before Christmas and he now only uses 3” 12 bore having sold his 10. He recommended 34 grains Alliant Steel and 38 grams of BB.  I have seen him knocking the geese down with them but haven’t tried them so can’t say from personal experience.

[rbrowning2]

The tgs video mentioned is worth a watch, few interesting bits on it like hyrdowads look to take a very long time to degrade and match your steel cartridges to your chamber length to save “friction” to the gun guess that may be damage?

Some of the logic of loud, big heavy magnum loads of probably heavy recoiling steel shot loads for high bird game shooting seams illogical to me, if you can afford such shooting then why not just use bismuth shot which would likely make for a much more all round pleasant days shooting.

[Scully]

7 hours ago, Dave at kelton said:

I can’t comment on these Hull shells but speaking to both them and Eley both are focusing on steel non plastic for the high pheasant boys. That seems to mean 3” loads for pattern density. Speaking to a pal before Christmas and he now only uses 3” 12 bore having sold his 10. He recommended 34 grains Alliant Steel and 38 grams of BB.  I have seen him knocking the geese down with them but haven’t tried them so can’t say from personal experience.

I can’t comment on the Hull either, but I rate Eley cartridges highly, and their 20 bore 24gram steel 4’s are very popular on our BIG shoot where we get some very high birds. 

Edited December 28, 2022 by Scully

[enfieldspares]

I'd agree (being an ex-revolver owner) that matching the cartridge case length to the chamber is good...nay...best...practice. It reduces leading. Also I have anal retention problems in that I wonder whether having a load exit a 65mm case in a 70mm or 76mm chamber (so that the shot column "expands" before it then enters the leed or cone of the chamber) is a good idea. Especially on some guns with a distinct "step" (usually from the paper case era) between chamber and leed or cone. With lead shot you get can get leading. With steel shot I just don't think it's wise. So I agree with Mr Biontoft's position that with steel the case length should match the chamber length. So it's not using a "magnum" case to allow a magnum load it's using a magnum case to allow a better match to case length with chamber length but still with a shot payload of standard weight fired at standard velocity.

Edited December 28, 2022 by enfieldspares

[6.5x55SE]

13 hours ago, neutron619 said:

Well then chaps. I've been amusing myself over the Christmas period by doing some reading about all sorts of things that our American cousins get up to over the pond, learning a lot about turkey hunting (seemed appropriate given the season), TSS and the way it's opened up the use of much smaller gauges (e.g. 20) for turkeys and indeed, for other quarry that they have over there.

Apparently, traditionally, for turkey, everyone's been banging off 3½" 12 gauge shells with a couple of ounces of small-ish shot in them and counting patterns in a 10" circle, but they're now replacing that with smaller loads of #9 TSS that still have 800-900 pellets in them. They're still head-shooting them in the usual way, but with much less sore shoulders (and much lighter wallets.) Very interesting stuff, although I do wonder whether the long-term effects of dropping tungsten all over the countryside are going to be any better than covering it with lead, given I seem to recall that tungsten is more reactive, horribly irritating to the skin and eyes and just as poisonous, if not moreso.

Anyway - all that got me onto thinking two things: first that there's hope for the .410 yet (assuming we're all willing to pay £3 per pop or whatever TSS costs) and second, that a 20 gauge would be a nice Christmas present to myself. So I ordered a Hatsan to play around with in the new year. Whilst doing my research, I found these:

(See: https://www.justcartridges.com/product/high-pheasant-extreme-steel-3-hp-20ga-2/)

Now, I can't personally see the point in those particular cartridges. It's hard to get a good enough pattern in a 12 gauge (e.g. 32g) load with a steel #4 that would do for duck, pheasant and and wood pigeon (i.e. a reasonable "all rounder") where the pattern still holds before the kinetic energy runs out*. A "balanced" cartridge, if you will. You certainly aren't getting closer to that if you drop the quantity of shot (28g in the cartridge above), although I daresay if you limited yourself to duck and pheasant, or filled it with steel #5's, you'd get on a lot better.

But my prejudices aside, this is a magnum, steel 20 gauge cartridge produced by a UK manufacturer, apparently beginning in 2022, and this post is to ask if anyone's seen any, used any, or knows how they perform either on paper in the field?

I know the Americans have had magnum "everything" for years, but now we're being pushed into steel it looks like Hull are starting to do some work on that sort of thing. What's weird is that there is literally no mention of them that I can find on their website - only JC list them, although I think Hull reference a 12 gauge cartridge with the same name. Nobody else seems to stock them or mention them on their price lists. My local shop has never heard of them.

I hasten to add, it's not that I particularly want to buy any / use them. But I am interested in the direction of travel, their performance, whether the "Hydrowad" works etc. I guess the closest thing is that we mostly use 3" shells in .410 these days and I wonder whether the 20 gauge will go the same way. 24g/#5 steel seems a reasonably balanced cartridge though - I'm not convinced of the need for these.

Anyway - all information, anecdotal or otherwise will be gratefully received.

 

* = I'd quite like to see some steel loadings that recognize the smaller numbers of steel pellets you can fit in the case. Maybe some 36g/#4 or 32g/#4½. #4 seems a good all-rounder like #6 lead, but the patterns always seem a little sparse by comparison.

Before i get accused of trying to put you down etc.

Are you really saying 12 bore 32grm Steel 4's don't pattern well so 3" 20 bore 1oz Steel 4's would be useless.

Well on both accounts sorry to say you are definitely wrong. As both loads pattern and kill very well snipe through to Canada geese infact i was given some cartridges to try by a good friend RC 24 grm Steel 3's and Gamebore 24grm Steel 7's yes 7's . The steel 3's I've shot snipe teal widgeon Mallard Greylag and Pink's last night i shot 9 Widgeon 1 Mallard with the 7's and 1 Greylag with 3's this morning widgeon teal with the 7's Greylag with the 3's . As for 3" 1oz 20 bore loads i was witnessed by three other gun's cleanly killing flighting Pinkfooted geese with 1oz Steel B's . Long winded 3" 1oz Steel from a 20 bore kills just fine so does 5/8oz Steel 4's and 3's from a 28bore 👍

[wymberley]

15 hours ago, neutron619 said:

"Anyway - all that got me onto thinking two things: first that there's hope for the .410 yet"

TSS? I was thinking a step further, perhaps. Scroll down this sub-forum a bit to the 410 thread. I'm pretty sure that you will understand the 100 bore (c.360" or more precisely .354) especially if you had it in metric. Wouldn't that be a turn up for the books!

[neutron619]

1 hour ago, 6.5x55SE said:

Are you really saying 12 bore 32grm Steel 4's don't pattern well so 3" 20 bore 1oz Steel 4's would be useless.

No, I'm not saying that.

I'm now using 12 bore / 32g / steel #4 for pretty much everything and they do fine to 45-50 yards. Wood pigeon, duck, whatever. For better or worse I'm now using nothing but steel except for .410.

What I was saying is that the energy of a steel #4 still runs out somewhere past 45 yards where I find (in my gun) the pattern fails. So the cartridge is unbalanced in the sense that pattern and energy don't both fail at the same time. You need a good 65-70% pattern (if not more) to keep enough of a 32g/#4 cartridge in the pattern to get the best out of it and that's not always easy.

My observation was only that if you reduce the amount of shot in a combination which already favours energy over pattern, you're making that cartridge even more unbalanced.

I'd imagine that 20 gauge cartridge would probably run out of pattern for pigeon at around 35 yards and energy at 45-55 yards. For pheasant or duck the pattern would probably reach 40 yards, maybe more. It's not that it wouldn't be capable - I wouldn't have bought a 20 gauge and a load of 24g/steel #5 shells to go with it if it wasn't - I'm just saying that it was odd that they upped the shot size to #4 and didn't just put a bigger load of steel #5 in it, which would have got a good dense pattern and enough energy to reach 40-45 yards and be a more balanced cartridge.

As others have kindly observed above, the reason seems to be that the makers are going after the high pheasant market rather than general purpose shooting, where bigger shot and sparser pattern would be acceptable. That was what I was interested in discussing and the answers above have provided the information I was missing.

[6.5x55SE]

3 hours ago, neutron619 said:

No, I'm not saying that.

I'm now using 12 bore / 32g / steel #4 for pretty much everything and they do fine to 45-50 yards. Wood pigeon, duck, whatever. For better or worse I'm now using nothing but steel except for .410.

What I was saying is that the energy of a steel #4 still runs out somewhere past 45 yards where I find (in my gun) the pattern fails. So the cartridge is unbalanced in the sense that pattern and energy don't both fail at the same time. You need a good 65-70% pattern (if not more) to keep enough of a 32g/#4 cartridge in the pattern to get the best out of it and that's not always easy.

My observation was only that if you reduce the amount of shot in a combination which already favours energy over pattern, you're making that cartridge even more unbalanced.

I'd imagine that 20 gauge cartridge would probably run out of pattern for pigeon at around 35 yards and energy at 45-55 yards. For pheasant or duck the pattern would probably reach 40 yards, maybe more. It's not that it wouldn't be capable - I wouldn't have bought a 20 gauge and a load of 24g/steel #5 shells to go with it if it wasn't - I'm just saying that it was odd that they upped the shot size to #4 and didn't just put a bigger load of steel #5 in it, which would have got a good dense pattern and enough energy to reach 40-45 yards and be a more balanced cartridge.

As others have kindly observed above, the reason seems to be that the makers are going after the high pheasant market rather than general purpose shooting, where bigger shot and sparser pattern would be acceptable. That was what I was interested in discussing and the answers above have provided the information I was missing.

I agree steel shot run's out of steam very quickly ( don't quote me the figures as fact ) have used steel for more years than i care to mention. eg 40 yards dead bird all day long 43 yards injured bird's 

[8 shot]

Would be interested in these for my MK60 High Pheasant, theyre not even on Hulls own web page yet