Geez, looking back it would appear that I never did mention the side by side shotgun I bought back in February.
I picked this up at the "Ancient Ones of Maine" show. Its a good show and the same place I got my TC Renegade a couple years before. In view of current events, I'm glad we got to go.
Anyway it was sold to me as "10 gauge" but the bores measure right around .74". 10 gauge would be .77, 12 is .72, so this is more like an 11 gauge. Actually, Track of the Wolf says 11 gauge would be .75 so this is more like "11 and a half gauge". I bought some 11 gauge wads and they work pretty well. The barrel has proof marks that I was able to look up. I was looking in a proof mark book my dad has, he said "You'll probably never find them" and at that very moment, I happened to spot one. Based on that I very approximately date the gun to the 1890s.
I shot it back in March but was under impressed with the pattern it would produce. The barrels are cylinder bore so they're never going to get the 80% pattern the turkey hunters go for.
More recently I ordered some plastic shot cups from Ballistic Products. They're normally used to protect the barrel from hard shot like steel or tungsten. I've had them several months but didn't get around to shooting them until Monday.
On the left and unfired shot cup, on the right, one I recovered downfield. You can just make out where I slit the cups, this is important, if you don't slit them the shot stays together.
This is the side of a computer case I found on the range, notice where it had been hit with shot before. Without help, the shot won't penetrate the steel. The big hole is where an unslit shot cup with 1 1/2 oz of #6s blew on through. This might be interesting for shooting targets but not useful for my purposes.
I didn't take any pictures of my pattern boards, it's just a bunch of holes in cardboard anyway. After a bunch of tests, my best load is 1 1/2 oz of shot with 3 drams of powder. This is following the old rule of thumb "Less powder, more lead, hits hard, kills dead. More powder, less lead, kicks hard, wide spread." I suppose this would be considered an "under square" load since my volume of powder is less than the volume of shot. Anyway, with that load I was able to get 142 pellets into a 14" square target at 25 yards. #6 should run around 270 pellets per ounce so I was shooting around 405 pellets. That's about 35% pellets on target. Pretty poor by modern standards but not bad considering a 100+ year-old gun. I probably wouldn't try it on turkey but I'd like to give it a go on ducks and pheasant, probably for squirrels too.
I did try going to 1 5/8oz of shot and both 3 and 3 1/4 dram but actually ended up with fewer pellets on target. The is pretty heavily built so I probably should go back and try 1 3/4oz to see if more pellets help.
While I was in Maine a month ago my cousin turned up and gave me a few pounds of Pyrodex powder. I'd never shot any before and since the shotgun burns a substantial amount (3 drams is 82 grains) I figured free powder was the way to go. That turns into its own story so I'll save that for another post.
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