Breakfast of Champions

You know you're addicted to range life when you come there at 8 am on your day off to have breakfast, train and by chance observe some shotgun science.

We are lucky to have an enthusiastic member who is genius at building and designing fun courses and props for our competitions. I have affectionately dubbed him our resident "Bob The Builder", which he hates and makes it all the more fun to tease him with. 

Bob was also there that morning working on a course design and needed to do some research on the spread/pattern of the pellets that is formed when using different shotgun chokes. While I was waiting for the others to arrive to start target pistol training, I took in my breakfast and a lesson.

Meanwhile, Bob set up a series of cardboard targets at 10, 18 and 30 yards down range. Then he went at them with the modified and full choke tubes to see what would happen. The results were self explanatory...

I have to admit that my nerdy side found this fun. It was great for me as a shotgun novice to understand the effects of using a choke. (Choke tubes are short inner tubes of various diameters that are inserted into the shotgun muzzle.)

There are various size choke tubes between using the just the bare barrel with no choke and using an extra full choke tube.  The basic point is that the closer you get to full choke the tighter the pattern for a longer distance.  (There is lots of info online but I found this site particularly quick and helpful if you're looking to learn more http://www.briley.com/understandingshotgunchokesabriefexplanationbybriley.aspx)

Additionally, the particular shooting event will determine what type of pattern want to achieve and which choke to use. For a tactical shotgun course with still clay targets placed close together at about 15 yards away, we went with full choke for accuracy.

Now, the whole purpose of this excercise was to determine what would be safest and best way to use the shotgun in the three gun comp that was days away.  Therefore, it would have been remiss of me not to have spent a little time with the semi auto shotgun... after all I was there to train, right?

All I can say is that those babies are sweet. Talk about a breakfast of champions.  :)

I love range life.

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