How Shotgun Pellets Draft in a Shot String

I still don't get it. Your pellets are all coming out of the barrel at the same time in a wad. I've missed doves at ridiculously close range that were flying really fast. I was swinging the barrel equally as fast. I didn't miss because the shot pattern was spread out in a string behind the bird. I missed because the shot pattern was so tight that if I did hit them there wouldn't be much left to eat. I've also connected on doves and knocked their head completely off. I really can't grasp the idea that a shotgun is going to pattern any different in the air at a flying target than a coyote standing completely still. The pellets are together when they leave the barrel. They come apart in the air but they don't curve in my experience. You're following through so that whatever you're shooting at flies or runs into the shot pattern. Or am I way off?
 
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I have shot at hundreds of Sporting Clays Rabbit targets rolling on the ground and no matter how fast I swing on them my pattern always looks round when it hits the ground.

A 12 foot shot string with #4 hevi-shot don't matter eh?

Your shot string is the length of the front pellet to the back pellet in the pattern. The shot string is the length of your pattern not the width or diameter of your pattern.

A 12 ft long shot string doesn't matter because the time between the front pellet to the back pellet is a very short period of time since the pellets are going from 600 fps to 900 fps.



Why Shot String Does Not Matter
By Randy Wakeman


Often when attempting to extol the virtues of a gauge or shell, the notion that shotstring is somehow of tangible importance is often touted. Perhaps it is cited because most folks cannot easily measure shotstring. Performance claims that cannot be verified are some of the easiest to make.
A complete database of shotgun patterns will likely never be generated. It has been estimated that it would take 18 billion patterning tests, equating to 8 million man hours of work: and this estimate did not include a shot-stringing study. The December, 1927, American Rifleman gave summaries from L. C. Weldin (ballistics engineer, Hercules Powder) that showed pattern percentages from 19-95 percent with the same load and choke based on 4,000 patterns.
In the October, 1946 American Rifleman a difference of 20% between minimum and maximum pattern percentages was tabulated. Oberfell & Thompson (1957) pulled that in to about 10% variation, assuming same brand of shell and same gun. That remains as close a generalization as can be stated to the present day.
Despite the automatic vagaries of any statement about shot string, Major Gerald Burrard explained it well, and discounted it after his tests. Though a several foot long shot string exists, as the shot cloud is moving ten times (or faster) than any game the shot cloud can only string a matter of inches: a 5 inch shift of pattern center at 40 yards was documented with a 40 mph moving target at right angles. Oberfell and Thompson (The Mysteries of Shotgun Patterns) found the same, finding that it was no more important than the accuracy of the hold of the shotgun itself, and with the 10% variation from shell to shell became even less worthy of concern. This is for direct crossing shots. It is naturally of no concern for outgoing or incoming targets.
Bob Brister (Shotgunning, Art & Science) gave some treatment to the matter, being able to shoot at his wife driving the family car towing a long paper target. However, his tests were outdoors, ignoring actual shotshell patterning deviations. Finally, and most recently, E. D. Lowry revisited the subject in detail, and set the matter to rest for good, concluding that Major Burrard was right all along.
ShotString remains more fable than of tangible value, joining back-boring and gauge selection within reasonable limits as being at all meaningful. Yes, a shotstring has at least the potential to move your shot cloud's center by up to 4 or 5 inches or so at 40 yards. To get excited about that, limited only to faster crossing shots, would require us to somehow ignore that gravity often nets us over 3 inches of drop at 40 yards, and the pattern from your next shell can easily show a 5% loss of efficiency.
Maybe we would like to forget that shotshell shot is the infamously ballistically hideous roundball, with just a 10 mph cross-wind moving our killing pattern far more than any imagined shotstring ever possibly could? Nothing yet approaches the tangible value of load selection by personal patterning; that is shot with no strings attached.


 
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Originally Posted By: dennydIf your shooting at a duck that's going 40mph your gun is swinging as fast as the duck.
...
just the facts, pure science is what were talking about

No offense dennyd, but that's not science. It's just plain incorrect. The gun doesn't move as fast as the target. The further the target is, the slower the gun moves in relation. Think of it this way, point your gun at something hundreds of yards distance at 12 o'clock. Now swing it to another point hundreds of yards distance at 3 o'clock. Those two points in the distance are going to be pretty far apart and you just leisurely turned to move your gun that distance in about a second.

Gun doesn't move as fast as the target.

But even if it did... The shot can't, won't, doesn't get spread by that muzzle being swung. Because 40 MPH is still way, way, way too slow to possibly do anything like that. As someone else said, you would literally have to be swinging the barrel fast enough to make a sonic boom, to have an effect as you describe.

It just plainly, simply, doesn't happen that way.

And no, I haven't read the book. Sounds like he got some stuff awfully wrong though.

- DAA
 
Right on DAA. dennyd Here is a simply test go to your favorite lake, swing your shotgun as fast as you can pull the trigger have your buddy video tape. Then get back to us with the results. Seen this done before. No string of shot.
 
Reading is for dummies you must be one, it's right there in the article cg or gc referenced 12' LONG beginning to end shot string with hevi-shot. It don't matter because there is nothing we can do about it. I'm done have a coke, I really don't care. When you argue with clowns I have to go down to your level, and it's just to time consuming on something that a child can understand. Originally Posted By: old catRight on DAA. dennyd Here is a simply test go to your favorite lake, swing your shotgun as fast as you can pull the trigger have your buddy video tape. Then get back to us with the results. Seen this done before. No string of shot.
 
Originally Posted By: dennydReading is for dummies you must be one, it's right there in the article cg or gc referenced 12' LONG beginning to end shot string with hevi-shot. It don't matter because there is nothing we can do about it. I'm done have a coke, I really don't care. When you argue with clowns I have to go down to your level, and it's just to time consuming on something that a child can understand. Originally Posted By: old catRight on DAA. dennyd Here is a simply test go to your favorite lake, swing your shotgun as fast as you can pull the trigger have your buddy video tape. Then get back to us with the results. Seen this done before. No string of shot.

Quit eating your crayons and drawing pictures and pay attention... I'll type slow to help you. In your words, the shot string may be LONG - however, that is from the front to back of the shot cone. The pellets at the back of the shot cone strike the target a few micro seconds behind the leading pellets. A fast moving target may have moved laterally a few inches in that micro second of time between the front of the shot impacting and the last trailing pellets. Inches... thus in the big picture the shot string is insignificant because shooters miscalculation of lead causes them to miss by feet, not inches.

Shot string is not a term to describe the width of the pattern. Shot string is not significantly WIDE - from side to side. Again, you cannot swing your barrel fast enough to disperse the shot laterally by a measure of many feet as you keep insisting. If that were true, swing speed of the barrel could determine pattern size. Swing slow and you have a tight pattern, swing fast and the result would be a much more open pattern. Ridiculous! If the shot string could be measured in many feet side to side consider what might happen when a long flight of birds came across the shooter broadside. Shooter swings fast at the leading teal in a strung out flock beak to butt rocketing left to right. Now because the shooter is swinging fast he gets a 12' wide pattern. Does this shooter now kill the lead teal and five birds trailing in a strung out fashion behind the lead bird with one fast swinging shot? If you are a waterfowl hunter you know that doesn't happen. You know the situations in a two bird for one shot aren't set up like that.

Quit being so damned stubborn and look at the videos posted, links provided and what ALL the other posters are telling you. I'm always open to learning. I'll listen, research and experiment then get out and put it to work for practical experience. If I'm misunderstanding a situation or just clearly wrong I admit my mistake or error and amend my stance, if necessary apologize and move on. I've been trying to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding your point and ignoring the insults but I think I had it right all along. Remember, if you insult others, be ready to get return fire. Especially when you are doing exactly what you accuse everybody else of.
 
I read Brister's book before too. Just went back and looked somethings up on that. Denny, where you're getting confused is where Brister had his wife drive the boat trailer w/ an 18' sheet of paper on it to see where & how the pattern hit AT THE SPEED HIS WIFE WAS DRIVING . However, you're confusing the strung out pattern on a MOVING BACKGROUND FOR REFERENCE PURPOSES w/ how the pattern actually hits in an area. Brister may not have even been moving the gun for those shots....but his wife was moving the background on which we see a record of pellet hits, but on a moving background. When you're shooting at a moving target, the pattern doesnt string out laterally, but the target moves thru it. The pattern side to side will be relatively round from the shooter's point of view, but strung out some from front to back. We're not shooting to kill a moving background, but to kill the intended target. The target, if we put the pattern where it belongs, will move thru the pattern. The prior analogy of killing the 5 ducks behind the first one would hold true if you're theory was correct, and it doesn't happen that way, and you're not correct. Still dont believe us? Take a large piece of paper for a stationary target, and try to get your pattern to string horizontally. You dont need 18' like Brister......you're not moving it like his wife was....a few feet wide should be fine. Swing that gun fast as you can. Get several pieces of paper and repeat it. Have fun. Let us know what happened.
 
When you see shot hitting way below a duck on the water and way out past the duck on the water, you are not seeing the shot string. You are seeing the bottom pellets of the pattern hitting the water first below the duck and the top pellets of the pattern hitting last way out past the duck. There is no way you can see the length of the shot string when you are shooting a shotgun.

I drew this drawing quite a while back of the side view of a pattern hitting the water.
2016-07-04 10.14.19 by Robert Morris, on Flickr

Even if your shot string was only one inch long your pattern would cover a long distance when it hits the water.
 
Originally Posted By: dennydReading is for dummies you must be one, it's right there in the article cg or gc referenced 12' LONG beginning to end shot string with hevi-shot. It don't matter because there is nothing we can do about it. I'm done have a coke, I really don't care. When you argue with clowns I have to go down to your level, and it's just to time consuming on something that a child can understand. Originally Posted By: old catRight on DAA. dennyd Here is a simply test go to your favorite lake, swing your shotgun as fast as you can pull the trigger have your buddy video tape. Then get back to us with the results. Seen this done before. No string of shot.

The dummy is the man that is not a critical thinker. I want to see you prove your theory. I have seen it proved wrong on more than one occasion. Not one person here with shotgun experience agrees with you.
 
Quote:However, you're confusing the strung out pattern on a MOVING BACKGROUND FOR REFERENCE PURPOSES w/ how the pattern actually hits in an area. Brister may not have even been moving the gun for those shots....but his wife was moving the background on which we see a record of pellet hits, but on a moving background. When you're shooting at a moving target, the pattern doesnt string out laterally, but the target moves thru it. This bears repeating I do believe.
 
Originally Posted By: songdog Quote:However, you're confusing the strung out pattern on a MOVING BACKGROUND FOR REFERENCE PURPOSES w/ how the pattern actually hits in an area. Brister may not have even been moving the gun for those shots....but his wife was moving the background on which we see a record of pellet hits, but on a moving background. When you're shooting at a moving target, the pattern doesnt string out laterally, but the target moves thru it. This bears repeating I do believe.

not sure he would *get it* no matter how many times it was repeated. some guys are just wired that way.
 
Originally Posted By: dennydIt is amazing that you can't grasp this, a child of 4 with a computer would figure this out.
If you keep on you look like a fool, really.

Keep on you might need to find a mirror.
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I'm not sure I believe all this. I watched a movie on HBO and Angelina Jolie could swing her pistol barrel fast enough to make the bullet curve around a pig carcass and hit the bull-eye behind the pig.
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Instead of arguing this, which is pretty stupid. Why not grab a box of shells and a buddy, go out to a pond and try this for yourself? Video the results and bring them back and post pictures. But if you want to save time, don't even try cause it ain't gonna happen. You can't spray buckshot like water from a hose.
 
Ya,I read the book many years ago , I'm 63 now, memory isn't the best. but it was a long shot string, Brister put a circle on the front of the boards and if he'd shot without the target moving he would have had his usual tight pattern.
So he gets his wife to drive the car and he shoots ,only a few of the shot hit his circle pattern and all the rest trailed off to the back of the trailer, shaped like a giant cigar, like they also mentioned in the shooting times article. Seems to me a coyote or duck flying crosswise would get the same few pellets as Brister did in his target. Am I right so far? Originally Posted By: Mike BI read Brister's book before too. Just went back and looked somethings up on that. Denny, where you're getting confused is where Brister had his wife drive the boat trailer w/ an 18' sheet of paper on it to see where & how the pattern hit AT THE SPEED HIS WIFE WAS DRIVING . However, you're confusing the strung out pattern on a MOVING BACKGROUND FOR REFERENCE PURPOSES w/ how the pattern actually hits in an area. Brister may not have even been moving the gun for those shots....but his wife was moving the background on which we see a record of pellet hits, but on a moving background. When you're shooting at a moving target, the pattern doesnt string out laterally, but the target moves thru it. The pattern side to side will be relatively round from the shooter's point of view, but strung out some from front to back. We're not shooting to kill a moving background, but to kill the intended target. The target, if we put the pattern where it belongs, will move thru the pattern. The prior analogy of killing the 5 ducks behind the first one would hold true if you're theory was correct, and it doesn't happen that way, and you're not correct. Still dont believe us? Take a large piece of paper for a stationary target, and try to get your pattern to string horizontally. You dont need 18' like Brister......you're not moving it like his wife was....a few feet wide should be fine. Swing that gun fast as you can. Get several pieces of paper and repeat it. Have fun. Let us know what happened.
 
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I better understand what your saying now.

Example(kinda) Aim a water hose to the street. A slow moving car, passing through the stream, will get wet front to back. A faster car will to just not as wet. Ya, I guess this is possible but the pattern/water stream, stays the same. So I guess if the ducks were all in a row, you might kill more than one. But here again, the shot pattern will not change.

I either understand or I'm totally confused.
 
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