GUNS Magazine April 1956

HOW TO CHECK YOUR
SHOTGUN PATTERN
SPEEDY METHOD OF TESTING DEVISED
TO REVEAL EXACT PERFORMANCE OF
WEAPON IN HUNTING AT ALL RANGES
By BERT POPOWSKI
OR 75 YEARS, after Fred Kimble accidentally fathered the
F correct method of choking a shotgun to control patterns,
hunters groped for an easy way to find out just how their
scatterguns behaved. The standard procedure was to fire
upwards of a score of shots at targets, count- the
shot holes in a 30-inch circle and then figure what percentage
of the total pellets fired actually hit in the circle.
But then Ken Richards, a choke maker of Gardner, Mass.,
smashed the time-honored, laborious pellet-counting meth-
u
od to smithereens. He reasoned that if a shotgun's killing
pattern was to be measured by the number of pellets hitting
in a 30-inch circle at 40 yards, a 15-inch circle at 20 yards
would serve iust as well. Then he went one step further.
Why not, he reasoned, shoot at a piece of target paper a
mere 10 yards from the muzzle, thus avoiding any counting
of single el let holes?
u Â
The more Ken studied his speedy method of patterning,
the more he liked it. For it follows that a shotgun which
scatters its load over a comparatively large area at short
range is going to scatter that load so widely at 40 yards
that it won't prove effective in bringing down game. And
a shotgun which makes a very small pattern at 10 yards
may sometimes be used with consistent killing effect on
game that is further than 40 yards from the hunter.
It isn't all that simple, of course. But it is true that the
quality of short-range pattern is what really tells the story
of any shotgun's effectiveness at normal hunting ranges,
which average out at 40 yards. So Ken proceeded to shoot
a lot of patterns at 10 yards with a variety of shotguns,
and then compared them with patterns which those same
guns produced at 40 yards.
These comparisons soon showed that most shotgun pat-
terns fell into four major classifications, all of which could
be interpreted in the light of their subsequent performance
at 40-yard killing ranges. Today's smoothbore hunter can
thus fire one shot, measure the size of the pattern, compare
it against the average listed on a chart worked out by Ken,
and know just how well a particular load will perform in
hunting. Finally, by comparing the quality of the pattern
against four master patterns, he can get a very clear picture
Comparison of patterns fired by Charles Bliss of East Templeton, Mass., is made by Ken Richards who developed short-
range method of checking shotgun. Richards finds open choke fires 37% patterns which full choke fires 71% spread.