Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/641958
I guess I just got educated again. It happens every so often. I was thumbing through a gun magazine and came upon an article that thoroughly excoriated the .410-bore shotgun. It was written by young author whose name I didn't recognize. Actually, the article was well written, well thought-out, and made some very good points, most of which I couldn't really argue with. The author correctly pointed out that the .410's shot column is simply too long. With most lead shot, a large percentage of the load's pellets are deformed on firing. This occurs primarily because of the twin gremlins of bore-scrubbing and setback. Setback occurs when the powder charge ignites and pellets are violently compressed as the charge accelerates down the barrel, damaging some of them in the process. As you would imagine, the extra-long column of the .410 exacerbates the problem. Bore scrubbing is pretty much self- explanatory. Compared to the larger bores, the .410's extra-long shot column is exposed to more friction as the pellets travel down the barrel. These factors really play hell with patterns because deformed shot tend to spread and separate from the pattern when they contact the atmosphere. As a result, patterns thrown from the tiny bore tend to get a little sketchy once the shot charge has traveled about 20 or 25 yards. The truth is that the guy got his facts right. The only problem is that he came to the conclusion that .410s were pretty much useless and needed to be relegated to the scrap heap. The author's conclusion pains me because I like .410s. It also leaves me wondering how to explain the thousands of gamebirds that I've killed using .410-bore shotguns over the last 60-odd years. All of these guns were handy and light—a pure joy to carry in the field. In addition, the ammo was so compact and light that you could carry damn-near a month's supply in your pocket and the only thing you'd notice is that it nicely balanced the weight of the sandwich in your off-side pocket. I've spent most of my life in the rural south, and I spend a lot of time outdoors, where an excursion through woods or fields is an almost-daily event. If I've got a gun of some kind along, I just might come across supper. The sheer "carryability" of .410 bore guns and ammunition makes them really nice for such impromptu foraging. I learned a long time ago that hard shot—the expensive kind—retain their shape better. What's more, those wads featuring a good protective cup also help to mitigate shot deformation. All of the shotgun gauges are, of course, subject to the same influences, but those mentioned are particularly important as applied to the .410, because it starts out with a very small payload that's shoehorned into an extremely long shot column, leaving no margin for error. I've owned and shot the little guns in almost every configuration made. I've had semi-autos and break-open single-shots and over/unders. I've owned several side-by-sides in .410 bore, including a best-quality hammer gun made by the Bertuzzi brothers in Italy that may well have been the cutest little shotgun I ever owned. All of them carried beautifully and performed well, as long as you didn't ask too much of them. The .410 that I currently use the most is a lovely little Browning Model 42 pump-action with a 26-inch barrel and Briley screw-in choke tubes. I've had it for quite a few years, long enough to have already refinished it once. I only shoot small birds like quail and doves and woodcock with it, and as long as I do my part, hold it straight, and don't try to reach beyond 25 yards, it works just fine. If you hit 'em, they come down. If you miss 'em, they don't. The 25-yard restriction isn't nearly the handicap that you'd think, because most small birds are taken closer than that anyway. A while back, I started thinking (which is admittedly a dangerous thing for me) about all of the above, which brought me around to wondering about the real limitations of the mini-gauge. I surmised that I'd probably use .410s even more if I could find a way to improve their pattern efficiency. That line of thinking led me to wonder what might be done to improve the overall effectiveness of the .410 bore, and specifically, whether one of the super- hard, heavier-than-lead pellets might be useful. These pellets have long been used to improve the Experimenting with Hevi-Shot in his .410 loads, the author discovers a significant improvement in the number of pellets in the pattern at normal upland ranges. S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 7 3 Robert Matthews h o t g u n s S