[mike T]

Here is a cold day question before summer shooting
Everyone knows one oz of 8's has more pellets than 1 1/8 oz of 7 1/2's, and at the normal velocities of 1145 to 1250 8's will break targets at the 27yds line. SO, Why not use 1 oz 8's and save on components,and wear and tear on your shoulder? Just what is the argument against it? I have not really heard or seen any "TRUE" evidence that it takes more 8's to break a target than 7 1/2's, It it a wind issue? are 8's blown off target or is that just a wives tale? Is temperature an issue? Any one with any great knowledge on this subject?
All that said I think I read in T&F that most of the all-americans use 71'2s for 27yds, and some use the "hotter" ones Above 1200fps. Reasons?
Thanks
mike t

 

[Mike Michalski]

Mike, There is no "TRUE" evidence. The closest we can come is the experience of the top shooters who will tell you they pick up an extra target every thousand or so. So for us C-23.5-C shooters that does not even translate. I say shoot what you have confidence in, and that gained by experience. I've only been shooting registered for 10 years so my experience, talent, and skill hardly give me the authority to advise others.

 

[lancelot]

Great question!, Mike T.

This has puzzled me many times. Neil Winston needs to jump in on this. When I talked to him two years at the Grand he had done extensive testing and found that 1 oz of 7 1/2's would not be as effective as 1 1/8 oz, but he had not done the testing required with 8's.

Your logic seems correct to me provided 8's have enough energy to break 27 yard targets. If it requires one more 8 than a 7 1/2 then___I__would lack confidence in the 1 oz loading.

Ron Ireland

 

[phirel]

#8 shot at normal velocities contain much more energy than is required to break a target at 40 yards if we ignore the vectors involved with an angled, spinning target. If the vectors of the shot and the target are considered, the problem becomes so complex I doubt that even Neil or zzt could come up with an accurate answer. The smaller shot does not retain velocity as well as the larger shot but that difference is not too great. Smaller shot is deflected more by wind currents and at times this can be important.

I use 7.5 shot from the 27, just because I always have.

Pat Ireland

 

[BDodd]

I have strong confidence in the pellet count over pellet size side of this debate. I use 7/8 of 9s up close and 1 oz of 8s at distance in all games. Both have more pellets than 1 1/8 oz of 7 1/2s. If you ride birds to or approaching their peak, this might not work well for you.....breakemall....Bob Dodd

 

[Didreckson]

I shoot a 1 oz load of 8's. But my shooting is nothing to measure anything against.

I did watch Ron Alcoriza smoke targets today from the 27 with 1 oz of light 8's.

Your mileage may vary, but Ron has a fair track record of shooting good scores.

 

[zzt]

I'm with Bob Dodd, but I'll take it a step farther. 8s launched at 1145 or 1200fps most definitely have the punch to break a target from the 27. So do 8 1/2s.

Ed Lowry, the famous Winchester ballistician, who by the way gave us the modern, accurate shot ballistics tables, proved that pellet hits on a clay were independent events. That is, there is not number of hits that must strike a clay to break it. The oft heard saying it takes 3 hits by 8s but only 1 by a 7 1/12 was shown to be just plain rubbish. Ed showed that either a single pellet had enough energy to break the bird or it did not. The notion that the clay somehow stored the energy until some critical level was reached, then broke was dismissed as rubbish. You can test this for yourself. Toss a pebble at the side window of your car. Did it break? No. Do it again. Break? Again. Break? and so forth. You can toss a pebble at that window until you are blue in the face and it is not going to break. Now, take that pebble and launch it at a high enough velocity and the window will break. That's how it works with a clay.

I believe you best chance of breaking a bird is to throw as many pellets at it as possible, assuming each pellet has more than enough energy to break the clay at target distance. 1oz of 8s contains more pellets than 1 1/8oz of 7 1/2s, so you have a statistically better chance with 1oz of 8 shot. But why stop there? 1oz of 8 1/2 shot is way more than what is needed for singles, so why use 8s? If you have a statistically better chance of breaking the target with 1oz of 8s vs. 1 1/8oz of 7 1/2s, why not up your chances even more and use 1 1/8oz of 8s?

All this being said, Phil Kiner and many of the other big dawgs believe they are better off with the most retained energy they can get. So they use 7 1/2s. I believe them. They are good at shooting. Can it help you? Probably not. It's like emulating George Digweed on the sporting clays course. He shoots full and full for everything. Why? Because his skill level is such that the probability of a miss due to a too thin pattern or random unevenness of pattern outweigh the possibility of him mispointing the gun. He is that good. So are the big dawgs at ATA trap. I can tell you for a lead pipe cinch, if you don't have close to their level of skill, go for pellet count over pellet energy. As long as you have enough retained energy to do the job, you won't regret it.

 

[Delbert]

If Bob really believed in pellet count he wouldn't shoot 7/8 oz of 9s, he'd shoot 1 1/8 oz of 9s. Elementary my dear Watson.

 

[RonC]

Mike, i'm with zzt. A 7 1/2 pellet has 23% more pellet energy than an 8. Check any table of ballistic data in a Shot Gun Sports Mag. That means that ZZT's pebble, if it were a 7 1/2 at 1000fps would have as much individual pellet energy as an 8 at 1200fps. That said, many pros use 7 1/2s over 8s at 27 yds and they smooke targets. My dats says that at 40 yds with good magnum
7 1/2 shot, the inner 20" circle has around 210 pellets. Given singles targets are broken around 32 yds, a light midified choke with
1 1/8 oz 7 1/2 shot gives 276 in the inner 20", more than enough. The outher ring never has enough pellets to count on. Don't know why anyone shoots 8s except to get that total smoke now and again, but them I do that with 7 1/2s all the time with an IM choke. For what it is worth, 7/8 oz 7 1/2s with a full choke fills the bill just fine for singles, 225 in the inner 20". Lower your velocities and break targets, avoid getting beat up I say. I shoot an IM though, 1 1/8oz 7 1/2s and have a 20" center with 326 pellets at 30 yds. Kiner says pick a choke for handicap and use it for singles; think he is right. To me it makes sense to also apply this to shot size.

Ron

 

[BDodd]

Delbert, the reason I started shooting light loads of smaller shot was due to required economic issues. It was either drop to 1 oz in the 1970s, dumpster dive for hulls, shoot with cloned wads, and get along with inexpensive loaders and cheapest primers or give up the games. Those years proved to me that I could save a reliable amount of cash and still exceed the pellet count of 7 1/2s by using 8s. When it came to pass that I discovered skeet and sensed I was throwing a lot of extra pellets with my trap loads I cobbled together the 7/8 oz of 9s for that game, sending approx. 512 of the gnats out to chase clays. By accident I discovered that weenie load also made 16 yard trap birds appear to hit a glass wall so I stuck with what I said above posting more than 1/2 of the 100s I've managed at singles. I have great confidence in those loads and that's half the game in my opinion. Will I ever make a dent in trapshooting lore? Probably not but I have zero belief that boosting my loads to 1 1/8 oz would make one whit of difference. Like guns, what works for one may not for others, eh?....breakemall.....Bob Dodd

 

[ken a]

I don't know if any of you have wandered out in the range and noticed a clay that was not broken and had a hole in it or a small chip. Always made me wonder if they were called lost or not and what size shot was used. Could it be that some of the bumps actualy have been hit but no visible break and would a larger size pellet have broke the bird. A past thread made an issue about how another brand of clays break easier than others. Your thoughts

 

[grnberetcj]

Kinetics folks...Kinetics...

Curt

 

[phirel]

Ron C- For a single #7.5 shot to have 23% more energy than a #8 shot traveling at the same velocity, the #7.5 shot would have to be 23% heavier than the #8 shot.

The real question is how much energy is transfered to the target, not how much energy is in the shot. Lets say that it takes X amount of energy for a single shot to go through a target. Both 7.5 and 8 shot have much more than this. If we assume that 7.5 shot has 10 X energy and 8 shot has 9 X energy. Then a 7.5 shot would pass through the target transferring X energy to the target and travel past the target with 9 X energy remaining. The #8 shot would pass through the target transferring X energy to the target and travel past the target with 8 X energy remaining. The energy transfered would be identical with both 7.5 and 8 shot.

A target can only absorb a limited amount of energy before the shot passes through the target. A shot that has 5 times this amount of energy will have the same affect on the target as a shot that has 10 times this amount of energy.

Pat Ireland

 

[zzt]

Pat, your first statement is not correct.

 

[Pocatello]

zzt, Pat's first statement is correct. Kinetic energy is one-half the mass times the velocity squared (actually speed squared, but who's quibbling?). If the speed is the same, then for 23% more energy one needs 23% more mass. Weight is mass times the acceleration of gravity, g, so 23% more mass means 23% more weight.

All of the argument of pellet size presumes there is a real difference in shot size, #7.5 versus #8. Every time I've looked closely at pellets I've wondered whether that difference is statistically significant. Pellets from the same bag appear to be somewhat distributed in size, some smaller, some bigger. Someday if I get bored enough I'll take a random sample from a bag of #8, another from a bag of #7.5, and run the statistics to see whether there is a significant difference in shot size. Of course, the results will be valid for those two bags only. Eyeballing it, it's always seemed that there is not much difference. And the real question when it comes to the "retained energy" argument is, "How do you know whether it was a big pellet or a small pellet that broke the bird?".

The only really valid test is the one suggested by Flagarto above - see how they work for you in breaking targets. Of course, the way to do that test right would be to do it double-blind - neither you nor the scorer would know what load was used until after the test was over. I'd like to get together some week with Neil at a marathon to give it a try.

 

[zzt]

I stand corrected. A momentary BF had me thinking of the formula for recoil. Thanks Pocatello. Sorry Pat.

 

[RonC]

The table of velocity and energy from Shotgun Sports gives the folowing, starting with a 1200 fps pellet, at 30 yds the 7 1/2 is going 15 fps faster than the 8 and the 7 1/2 has 1.59 foot pounds of energy compared to 1.29 for the 8. The heavier pellet will go faster and further than the lighter pellet. At some point the 8 will have no energy but the 7 1/2 will still have some. I think this matters.

Ron

 

[Andy44]

I'm with BDodd on this one. I too have done a lot of "testing" with many different loads (like to tinker a lot and too much time on my hands), and have found 7/8oz of #9 shot @1275fps to be an outstanding multi-purpose load. Whether it be Skeet, Singles, 1st shot in Doubles, or even H-cap back to the 24, this load WORKS! And yes, I do it to save money; but more importantly, I do it because I have total confidence in them. Folks, there are a LOT of pellets in this load, and with the proper chokes, sometimes there isn't even dust left over! On the other hand, I recently loaded up some "soft" 1 1/8oz loads of #8 shot (14.8gr of Nitro100 under a DownRange XL 1 1/8 wad) and found this load to be more than enough back to the 24 yd line. This load is good for approximately 1100fps and patterns exceptionally. BTW, I "smoked" a few at the 24 using a MOD choke. Confidence in a load is priceless!

AndyH

 

[JBrooks]

You asked:

"Any one with any great knowledge on this subject?"

No.

Opinions, yes.

 

[wolfram]

I am a big fan of 1 Oz loads and #8 shot. That is a great combo for singles and doubles and even short yardage HC. That being said, I use 1 1/8 Oz of #8 @ 1,220 Fps for handicap shooting which for me is 26 yards. The targets do in fact break better with the extra shot. Opinion or knowledge --- well it has been argued that knowledge is a collection of opinions so here is one more. I have spent many thousands of dollars forming these opinions and really what I learned is that there are many many solutions to this problem of breaking clay targets, the fun is in finding your own solution and that just might involve #7 1/2 shot. Usually the reason targets don't break for me is because the center of the pattern and the target were never in the same place at the same time, (lack of skill) not because my ammo was not up to the chore.