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Does the shot stream push or pull a missed target?

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7.9K views 72 replies 42 participants last post by  Choppinjw  
#1 ·
I'm sure all of you have seen a near miss alter the flight path of a target significantly. Is the shot stream pushing the target as it nears, or pulling the target as it passes? I am intentionally trying not to be technical here.

I've heard it both ways, and in my feeble mind only one can be correct. This occurs most of the time I miss a straightaway, and I would like to know if I am under or over the target.
 
#10 ·
I bet everyone is now wondering what percentage of a shot string is air? Let's see, a #8 pellet is .o9 inches in diameter. The air it displaces is the area of the circle it it is making in the air. So, the area of that circle is determined by our old friend "pie are square". Doing the math, the area of a pellet is .002 square inches. Let's be generous and say that out there at about 35 yards there are still about 400 pellets in a 30 inch, shot string pattern. 400 x .002 equals 2.83 total square inches of shot.

So, how many square inches in the pattern? Doing our pie are square math we find that there is about 706.5 square inches in a 30 inch pattern. As such, if we divide our 2.83 by 706.50 we find that the shot only makes up 0.004 % of the 30 inch pattern or 99.6% of the pattern is air. But wait, that is only a flat dimension. The main shot string may be at least 6 feet long! Bummer! Pellets obviously make up a tiny percentage of a shot string and those little pellets hardly generate any wake individually and many of these mini wakes are counteracting each other.

So how can a shot string generate any organized wake at all sufficient to move anything?
 
#13 ·
It's like driving around a semi truck. The front of the semi pushes the air out of the way and the back creates a slip stream. It depends on whether you are in front of or behind the target when you miss it. You could be moving the target by pushing it with the air, or catching it in the slipstream. It's just like you can't read the breaks, you can't read the misses by how it moves the target.
 
#17 ·
Here is a series of rising placements of the center of the shot cloud. The "- 4" is the lowest shot that hits a target with at least a pellet; "+4" at the end of the clip is the highest placement that still hits something. Hit the expand button to get the full effect.

http://www.mn-trap.org/target_chall...hallenge_2012/target_breaks_final/target_break_movies/TBF_rising_POA breaks.mp4

As you see, there was no "wind" effect on any of the shots; the target is entirely unaffected by the passing shot or the approaching shot for that matter.

Note also, of course, that the targets break the same way when the main body of the shot-charget is below the target as they do when the main body of the shot-charge is above it. That's why you can't read target breaks.

Yours in Sport,

Neil
 
#21 ·
We all know that targets are affected by wind. The next question is, does the shot cloud create wind. Any mass passing through space displaces air and moves it, which is the definition of wind, moving air. A shot cloud passing a target has to have an effect on that target to some degree. How much this is noticeable could be affected by many variables. Just because it doesn't show in one shot in Neil's video, doesn't mean it never happens.
 
#27 ·
Am I too late?

Image


Does a shot column produce or induce wind? Here, hold my beer, stand over there, and let's find out :)

Here, pull my finger ...... we will then proceed to produce some induced wind. Wasn't the shot though. Them there popcorn farts are HOT.

Don T
 
#29 ·
Shooting in heavy fog, rain or snow will sometimes show a "hole" opening where the shot stream passes through. Given the space between individual pellets shot could not be hitting every drop of rain, flake of snow or all of the fog so it must be something else that creates the hole. Is it wind, turbulence, heat or is there another explanation? Pass the popcorn pls!