10-05-2009, 02:00 PM
Yup I sure do love blasting those happy little ducklings out of the sky! I got out of bed at 3:00 for it - it's one of my favoritest things. Anyway, 3 of us shot 17-18 ducks and 6 geese (2 of which were banded: YIPEE!) It was a riot as always.
Anyways Jigs, ever tried patterning steel shot? I'm not sure if you meant 50 yards or 50 feet, but I had a real eye opener when I patterned it last year. I patterned 3 different loads @ 50 yards with 3 different chokes. I did 1 1/4 oz of 3 shot (or 2, I'm not sure), 1 1/4 BB, and 1 1/8 of BBB. The chokes I tried were Full, Modified, and Improved Cylinder. I had big sheets of cardboard w/ 30" circles - I aimed right in the middle of them.
I counted the pellets within the circles, but I won't get into that. I was mostly just looking for nice even, uniform patterns, without any holes that you could fit a duck (or goose[laugh]) in. Here's what I will tell ya: if you plan on shooting ducks @ less than 50 yards, you better be shooting Improved Cylinder, or something more open than that. Otherwise you'll have to be a really good shot to hit them, and chances are you won't be eating much of them either. Conversely, if you want to shoot them at 50+, Modified is great.
One thing that I thought was pretty interesting was that the BB load with the full choke looked really good @ 50 yards. Everything else with the full choke was more uneven, and everything with the mod was a little too tight.
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Anyways Jigs, ever tried patterning steel shot? I'm not sure if you meant 50 yards or 50 feet, but I had a real eye opener when I patterned it last year. I patterned 3 different loads @ 50 yards with 3 different chokes. I did 1 1/4 oz of 3 shot (or 2, I'm not sure), 1 1/4 BB, and 1 1/8 of BBB. The chokes I tried were Full, Modified, and Improved Cylinder. I had big sheets of cardboard w/ 30" circles - I aimed right in the middle of them.
I counted the pellets within the circles, but I won't get into that. I was mostly just looking for nice even, uniform patterns, without any holes that you could fit a duck (or goose[laugh]) in. Here's what I will tell ya: if you plan on shooting ducks @ less than 50 yards, you better be shooting Improved Cylinder, or something more open than that. Otherwise you'll have to be a really good shot to hit them, and chances are you won't be eating much of them either. Conversely, if you want to shoot them at 50+, Modified is great.
One thing that I thought was pretty interesting was that the BB load with the full choke looked really good @ 50 yards. Everything else with the full choke was more uneven, and everything with the mod was a little too tight.
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