THE TECHNOID PATTERNS SOME MORE... Last month your
garrulous guru of gunning gear tried to show you why it may be
advantageous to add some choke for those longer edge-on birds.
Unfortunately, from the comments received, many of you actually
understood the brunt of the T Meister's arguments. The Technoid now
knows how the Wizard felt when Dorothy peeked behind the curtain.
That will never do. Obfuscation breeds respect. This time around we
hope to be more successful at sowing mass confusion.

Here it is: Although just about any choke/shell combination can crush a
bird at almost any distance, the proper choke/shell selection will do it
more often. "Duuuhhh", you opine sagaciously. "I know what to look
for when I hit a target. Tell me something new". Not so fast. 'Reading'
your breaks can be very misleading when you start to analyze things.
Just because the break looks good does not necessarily mean that you
were using the right choke shell combination. It can be deceptive. Take
the typical 40 yard crosser, hovering out there on the outer edge of
sanity. If both cylinder bore and full choke can crush that bird (and they
can- try it with cylinder bore- after a while you will get some good
breaks), why on earth use full? Doesn't cylinder give a bigger pattern
and thus more chance of a hit?

Cylinder does indeed give a bigger total pattern, but at distance it gives a
smaller effective spread. The effective spread is the center core of the
pattern containing a density that is guaranteed to break the bird. The
rest of the pattern fringe is too thin to perform reliably. Sometimes it
can sometimes produce a kill, but sometimes not. To ensure a kill on a
distant bird, you have to be more accurate with the open choke than you
do with the tight one.

It is amazingly hard to convince some people that the previous statement
is true. They start whacking away at those long birds with their fairly
open chokes and start to get high quality hits and plenty of them. They
are absolutely convinced that the occasional miss is due to shooter error,
not pattern failure. The argument is "If the choke works once, it should
work every time. The error must be mine." If they did their
homework, they might find that the proper choke/shell selection could
improve their scores by decreasing overall pattern, but increasing the
effective central part. They should stop blaming themselves for the
proper functioning of the laws of physics.

Borrowing shamelessly from St. John of Brindle, here is a birds eye
view comparing the total pattern size to the interior effective spread of
full choke and cylinder bore. The diagram is not to scale (very little
about this newsletter is).


[This was a really advanced diagram. It made clear great mysteries.
Sorry, but it does not reproduce in the ether.]


As we showed last month, the largest effective pattern you can hope for
with 1 1/8 oz of #8s and an edge-on bird is 24". Now note that the
elongated football shape of the "effective spread" of the cylinder bore
pattern tapers down to almost nothing where the full choke's "effective
spread" still has about 18" of its 24" maximum effective spread working
for it. The tip of the effective spread of the cylinder bore occurs at
around 40 yards. This means that if you are dead on perfect, you can
reliably break that 40 yard bird with cylinder bore, just as long as you
can consistently put that tiny tip of the football on the bird. Your
cylinder bore breaks, if perfectly centered, will look pretty impressive
too. This is what is misleading. The breaks from the full choke often
do not appear any heavier, but the full choke has almost all of its
optimum 24" effective spread at this distance. With full you can be
almost a foot off either way at 40 yards and still reliably break the bird.
Both chokes will do the job, but the full choke gives you the bigger
effective pattern and thus a better chance to reliably whack that target.

What happens beyond 40 yards? The effective pattern of the full choke
keeps getting smaller and smaller until it too peters out at about 55
yards. All chokes give equal patterns if you can find the right distance.
What happens to the full choke at 55 yards, happens to the cylinder bore
at about 40. Somewhat after 40 yards (depending on shell and barrel)
the cylinder bore pattern becomes so thin that no part of the pattern can
be counted on to reliably break the bird. Your score is now squarely in
the lap of the perfidious Lady Luck. That does NOT mean that the
pattern will not break the bird some of the time, just that it will not
break it every time even though your aim is perfect. Thus your cylinder
bore choke might absolutely crush a 50 yard crosser some or even most
of the time, but full choke will do it more reliably and even allow for a
bit aiming error on your part.

Do not make the mistake of being misled by breaks that appear to be too
heavy when you use the proper amount of choke. Many shooters feel
that their pattern is optimized when they get nice 4-5 piece breaks. They
feel that if the break is any heavier, they are choked tighter than they
ought to be and are giving up pattern diameter. This is not necessarily
true.

All shotgun patterns are denser in the center than at the edges. All of
them. They are Gaussian and follow the Technoid's beloved bell shaped
curve. This means that when the fringe of the effective pattern has
enough pellets to reliably break the bird, then the center of the effective
pattern has to have too many. An adequate fringe requires a hot center
because Herr Doktor Gauss and Madam Belle CurveÇ absolutely require
it. So, do not be afraid of a little smoke when you break the bird. It
may actually mean that you have a larger effective pattern.

It is the same thing with pellet size as it is with choke. Pellet energy is
just as important to effective pattern as pellet count is. The smaller the
pellet, the more of them you need to reliably break the bird. You can
just pound a 50 yard crosser using #9 shot and a bit of choke. Really,
you can. That does not mean that #9s are better than #7´s when the
bird is speck on the horizon. What it does mean is that you have to put
a whole bunch more of #9s on the bird to do the job. Due to the large
number of #9s required to break the bird, you have to be more on center
than with #7´s. This even takes into account that a shotshell contains
70% more #9s than #7´s by count. Due to their small size, #9s lose
momentum, and thus energy, very quickly after 30 yards. This loss of
energy alters the shape of the effective spread center core of the pattern
just like using too open a choke. Remember, effective pattern requires
enough pellets of sufficient energy. Choke determines the "enough",
pellet size determines the "sufficient energy". Using the same choke,
pellets that are too small make the effective pattern taper out earlier than
it would if heavier pellets were used with the same choke. Again, #9s
will do the job, but you have to be absolutely dead center, just like you
do with open choke.

It should be mentioned here that all of these calculations concern
standard targets which are edge-on or nearly so. Well over half of the
targets on any given match course will meet this criteria. Obviously, the
more of the target bottom (or top) that is visible, the more you can
afford to open up your pattern and still guarantee a kill.

One caveat: If you insist on using one ounce loads, be aware that your
effective pattern spread has just shrunk by 11% and that you have that
much less chance to hit the bird. Do you really want to give that much
away? Do not even think about using 7/8 oz loads!

Next month, patterns for the close-in shots.