Thread: Difference in shotgun ammo

Yep pattern is more important than no of pellets and speed. A lot of people never pattern a gun, it can be quite eye opening.
A pattern target is a 1 metre circle drawn on paper and shot at typically 40 metres or yards. The no of pellets in the circle is counted and compared to the average pellet count for the cartridge using a table like the one above to get a % over 70 is good. Next look at the distribution, it wont be even but are their gaps bigger than your hand? Try this with a range of cartridges and some will do better than others, in my case with one shotgun any steel load over 1 oz had holes and the faster the speed the worse the result. Different gun gave different results (o/u versus semi) but same choke imp mod in both.