looking at the guts..

[scottr]

i was just wonderin cuz that guy said that misshapen shot had been scratching barrels

Here is what I posted in the hevi-shot thread. The scratched barrel story was told to me by a shop owner and not a personal experience.

Here are some photos of a hevi shot shell I opened today. It was a size 4 20 ga magnum shell. I still have a couple of boxes of this stuff. This is pretty typical of the 5 or so I have cut open to show to friends etc.



Full of pits, burrs, out of round and snowman pellets



More of the same



This was the biggest and smallest pellet in a size 4 shell



these are the worst offenders in the shell. One was three pellets stuck together and many had burrs or what I like to call the snowman effect.

Now I have never seen a shell that had a "burr" that was outside the wad where a barrel could be scratched and have not had that experience myself (only told stories of it from a shop guy) but at a minimum with the inconsistency in the shot size an lack of round pellets I can't imagine it would make for good patterns.

[scottr]

looking around i found this post and it made me want to look into the quality of the shot in the shells i use. 

the first pic is 3 inch size 4 black cloud. the premium steel(shiny stuff) was amazingly uniform and clean.the flight stopper steel was also very cleanly cast

second pic is the cheaper stuff i use. 3 inch size 4 winchester expert high velocity. not too bad. a dimple here and there with a little size difference but not much.

third pic is flightstopper on the left. premium steel in the center. winchester on the right

you guys ever check in on your shot.

This all looks amazing compared to what I am talking about (see the photos I posted). The band on the Federal shot is a design element that I think is supposed make it perform better

[addicted]

yeah its supposed to make a better wound channel or something like that. i cant say much for my shooting but the shot was definately doing the trick when i was hitting the birds. 

 wow those do look like retarded snowmen. 

[scottr]

addicted,

Kudos to you for being curious and wanting to understand more.

personally at 30 yards or less I very much doubt you will see any significant difference in a perfectly round shiny pellet or a deformed square pellet.  If  you are constantly finding yourself shooting outside of 40 yards I would lend the advice to change some of  your tactics in water fowling. 

If you would like to really have a good read take a look at this article from Delta waterfowl.

http://www.deltawaterfowl.org/magazine/2005_01/01_shooting.php

looks like a good article. I'll have to read it when I have a little more time.

[addicted]

yeah its pretty sweet. and they could have totally made it twice as long.