Economical shooting doesn’t help shotgun industry

Shooting a firearm is an economy of scale.

The pervasive school of thought favors volume and mass. Most rifle shooters, for example, believe that big, heavy bullets are better than small, light bullets. You can kill a deer or a hog with a 22-caliber bullet, but you can kill it better with a bigger bullet. Translated, that means the bigger, heavier bullet is moe likely to forgive a shooter’s shortcomings.

The sweet spot lies at the intersection of the mass and velocity axes. It occurs in two places, at .308 caliber and .284 (7mm) caliber. With enough powder, you can make either go almost as fast as you want, which flattens the arc between muzzle and target and increases their terminal velocity.

With smaller calibers, the cost-benefit ratio skews so radically that they are clearly uneconomical. The .264cal is gaining on the other two, but that’s a subject for a different article.

Shotgunning follows a parallel ideology. With the near extinction of upland bird hunting, we use shotguns almost exclusively for waterfowl. Upland hunting requires precision. Unless you are really fast and really accurate, you only get one shot at one bird. The size of the game and the near range of engagement are appropriate for light loads, which welcomes cartridges smaller than 12-gauge.

Waterfowl hunting evolved around the 12-gauge. The rising popularity of goose hunting, combined with the legislated requirement of non-toxic pellets, accelerated 12-gauge evolution.

Ironically, non-toxic shot evolution revitalized the sub- gauges, too, but the 12- gauge has a seemingly insurmountable lead over the smaller gauges.

When lead pellets were legal for waterfowling, a 23/ 4- inch 12- gauge was sufficient for all applications, but some hunters believed you needed more punch to hit high- flying ducks. The 3- inch 12- gauge cartridge was the solution.

When lead was outlawed for waterfowl, steel shot for decades was the only option. Steel pellets, seated in inappropriate wads, had to fly much faster than lead to kill ducks at the ranges at which hunters had grown accustomed.

The 3 1/2- inch 12- gauge cartridge was the solution. Shotgunning doctrine coalesced around that tenet and congealed with the rising popularity of goose hunting. Geese are bigger and tougher than ducks. Most shots are higher and longer. Doctrine dictates fast, heavy payloads from 3 1/2- inch cannons.

Waterfowl hunting doctrine also dictates sending the maximum amount of shot aloft to increase kill probability. Instead of picking and leading individual geese, hunters instead catch geese in a virtual steel net.

Also, waterfowl hunting is a communal sport. It doesn’t matter who gets credit for killing a duck or goose. What matters is that none get away. It doesn’t matter if five birds or 50 hover over the decoys. Everyone in the hunting party is going to empty their shotguns. The group I hunted with Thursday was a rare exception, but this doctrine, along with high-volume trap shooting, drives the entire shotgunning economy.

I shoot at delicate clay targets all year long. It’s a one-shot proposition. I also notice that an open choke demolishes a clay target at long distances. I am conditioned to those two facts.

On a recent goose hunt, I forgot to bring choke tubes for my Remington V3 12- gauge. The Trulock turkey tube that was in the gun wouldn’t work. My shell bag also contained a RemChoke Skeet tube. That’s one extreme to the other.

My bag contained half a box of 3- inch, Winchester Blind Side cartridges containing 1 3/8 ounce of No. 2 steel and a loose handful of 3-inch Hevi-Metal cartridges containing 1 1/4 ounce of No. 6 steel and Hevi-Shot blend.

An open choke should be more appropriate than modified or full choke for heavy loads of large pellets. If I didn’t shoot at excessively high birds or birds at the edge of the decoy spread, I should be fine.

My first shot, with a Blind Side cartridge, instantly killed a fairly high goose that was climbing fast. My second shot, with a Hevi-Metal cartridge, folded another high flyer that was banking and climbing. My third shot killed a wounded goose flying fast and low at the far corner of the decoy spread. I spent the rest of the morning shooting video.

Three shots, three kills, through a 12- gauge with a skeet choke in a gun made by a company that doesn’t make shotguns anymore. I’m no help at all to the shotgun economy.