VOIGT2 PRINTER

PRO TIPS with MICHAEL VOIGT - LESSON 2

Three Gun Shot Size and Strategy

Today we’re going to talk about shot size. The first load that I am going to use is number 4 shot with 1-5/8 ounce of shot in it. That is a really heavy load with a lot of recoil. The next load I am going to shoot is 1-1/8 ounce of number 8 shot. Much lighter load and we’ll see how it does on the target.

What you’ll see from that is even though the second load kicks much less and gives me much quicker recoil control recovery off of that, so I can keep the gun firing, it’s effectiveness on the target wasn’t much different.

Now we’re going to go to paper targets to see the pattern on this. Again that was a number 4 and here’s the number 8 shot. Now we’ll walk down and we’ll take a look at that pattern.

This is our first target that we’ve shot with a number 4 load. This is a very heavy load, a lot of recoil, good knock down power. But, as you can see with only 220 pellets, it’s not a very dense pattern. There’s areas here where we could put the bird if it was on a course of fire, that even a good shot would not hit this. Especially if the bird were flying through on an angle, there’s a lot of places that we could put this bird and it would not get hit. So even with a good shot by the shooter, you may not get a good target.

This is the target that we shot with number 8 shot. This load has approximately 550 pellets in it but, as you can see on the target, they are more evenly distributed and it’s a much denser pattern. Whether this claybird is hanging stationary on a course or whether it was flying through the air on an angle, it would have a very hard time finding a place in this pattern that it wouldn’t get hit by several pellets.

You can always choke the gun for a longer shot. But, it’s always a better choice to use smaller pellets than large pellets, as they’ll always work on the targets for you.

One of the misconceptions in USPSA is that you need a heavy load with large pellet size to knock down steel targets. We’ve just shown you with the two pepper poppers, that’s not necessarily true.

We’ve also shown you that by using a smaller pellet size you can get more pellets into the same target area effectively, breaking a clay bird better than if you used the larger size shot.

Now we’ve got a small scenario set up here, a stage with 4 pepper poppers and one flying claybird that’s going to come out. Most of the time, people would shoot this from right to left worrying about this activator target. The main misconception on this is, it does take a while for that left pepper popper to fall down.

So what I am going to do on this scenario is shoot the poppers from left to right giving that first popper a chance to fall, activating the bird and then go after it as soon as it gets off the trap.

Remember, choose your chokes, choose your shot wisely. I’ll see you next time.