Thread: Took the .410g for a walk

Dang it @Micky Duck you've had me researching .410 hand loads all day and now I think I might just go that way.

I plucked the pheasant to put in the fridge for another few days and found 3 pellets on the bird, 2 in the boiler room and one in the upper neck which explains the instant kill.



Not bad for a 40m shot with the 3" Winchester #6 shot but I decided to pattern both my guns with both lots of ammo at 30 meters just to see how much luck was involved.

The Baikal has a 26.5" barrel with fixed chokes of improved and full and my little Yildiz has 28" barrels with interchangeable chokes. I screwed in the same full and imp chokes to keep the test fair between the two.



I roughly drew a 3" circle on some cardboard and shot one of each of the Winchester #6 and the Gamebore #4 through the full choked barrels of each gun.
Although both guns are full sized the little Yildez is a much lighter and pitite little gun than the Baikal which shares the same big frame as the 12g model so you can really notice the sharper recoil of the winchester 11/16oz loads over the lighter 1/2oz game bore loads.. the heavier Baikal felt no different between loads.

First up was the Yildez which seemed to favour the lighter loads of #4s





The Baikal up next and it showed a much tighter group with the Winchester #6s. The Gamebore #4s really opened up at 30m. Id only ever patterned them at 20m in the improved choked bore in the past so this was interesting to see. Some pellets spread so low that they hit the Yidlez test target that some rookie left on the ground under this one.. so please ignore the vertical strikes in the Yidlez pattern it was Russian sabotage at work.






Im really keen to try some 3/4oz loads now.. a little more lead traveling slightly slower may patten better.
It looks like the only way Ill be testing them any time soon is if I load some myself. Ill have to pick up some primers, wads and some shot when I work out the best components for the task. I have Win 296/H110, Hogdon Lilgun and Alliant 300MP powders to try and a handfull of empty hulls so there's a start point.
I drove around 6 gunshops this morning and the was next to nothing on offer other than a few light trap loadings in #7.5s and #9s. There were 2 boxes of Eley #6 1/2oz loads at gun city but that was about the extent of the game loads available.