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How large a paper target do you need to assure catching 99.99% of all the pellets from a shotgun pattern at a measured distance of 13 yards ?

Shotgun will be shot with a variety of loads and chokes from a benchrest.

Will a four foot by four foot piece of paper do it ?

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If that gun won't keep all the shot on paper at 13 yards,get another gun or atleast put a tighter choke in it. 4'x4' should be plenty.

Why 13 yds.? Standard practice is 40 yds. for everything except .410 and 30 there. For standard 40 yd. distance use 4x4 ft.

If your looking to zero one do it at 16 yds. and then on a mount and shoot to see pattern center vs. point of aim.

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Among trap shooters, there is some amount of technical work that has already been done at 13 yards and it is easier to share notes when we're doing it at the same distances.

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Hammer go to your local newspaper and see if you can get remenent ends of rolls. After they get down so far and if the roll screws up they just put in a new one.Most of mine I believe were 42" wide. Magnum Man

I've patterned a lot of shotguns at closer ranges, as well as long, and if a 2x2-foot piece of paper won't catch almost all of the pellets at 13 yards then something is really wrong the shotgun or shooter, no matter what the choke.

If 40 yds is your distance I'd find a local paper company and see if they have a roll of 48" wide light brown paper. Comes on a sizable roll, probably several hundred feet long. Haven't bought one since I made of a go of it trying to develop loads and patterns customers shotguns for a living back about 2002. Good thing I didn't give up my day job. Most folks don't care, don't know or could not afford the cost. I had a web site: GSSPatterning.com (now gone). Mark a 2-3" aim point and have it. Figure a way to make a 30" circle around the heaviest part of the pattern and start counting. I'd also take about 5 shells and count out the pellets then average them out.

Good luck.

Alan

Near or far, we've always used a 4'x8' sheet of 1/4" plywood

Gunner

Home Depot, Lowes, Ace, etc, go to the paint section and pick up a 140' roll of 35" contractors paper for $9.97 per roll. I use a bunch of this stuff patterning shotguns.

Here's some pictures of my homemade holder:

Reloader7RM,

Looks VERY much like the holder I used when I had my patterning business. Mine was taller and I used wire to hold the large paper clips. I also pre-cut 48" long, 48" wide pieces of paper.

Alan

13 yds. will give you and idea of POI for your shotgun (high, low, left or right)of where you point with the mid bead and front bead making a figure 8 and place at 6 o'clock on the bullseye. 37-40 yds will give you your shotguns pattern using different chokes and shot sizes.
A 24" x 24" wide piece of paper will work at 13yds, you should have 42" -48" at 40 yds. Patterns at that range usually run 33" or less.

Ok, I'm learning here, how do you count the second shot vs the first shot on plywood?

I can see metal where you roll paint it each time, but plywood?

If you use white wash or light (left over latex wall paint) you can roll ovet the pellet marks . With a 4x8 sheet you have four surfaces to work with.

Umm. Nice target set-up, but I hope you don't shoot at it right where it sits. Does the roll of paper reside in a piece of sewer pipe at the bottom, and emerge through a slot cut in it?

The truth is you don't need to catch 99% of the shot. The only pellets you need to catch are the ones inside a 30" circle. You can calculate what percentage of shot hits there by factoring the number of pellets in the shell. Beyond the 30" circle, you need about 12" to make sure the pattern is centered where you want it.

More than 30 years ago I bought an end roll from a paper company for next to nothing, and I still have it. We also use it for covering picnic tables.

Steve.

Hi Hammer1,

Even if there is no real standard method of measuring the pattern of shotgun shell the european manufacturers use a target with circles of different diameters. They place the target at 37m around 40 yards and count the number of pellets that strike in the 76cm (30inches) circle then look for the "empties" and how the pellet are spread in the circle. Today they use electronic system as the US makers do. They shoot targets with each different choke tubes. You can adapt this method to the shotgun and shell you use and to the game you hunt.

In France, Germany, Italy, Spain etc... we produce speciality loads for woodcock hunting, made to open very fast, for use in heavy bushes. Most of time, we pattern them from 8m (9yards) to 18m (20 yards) which correspond to the max distances most of woodcocks are shooted at in our forest. This cartridges are also use for rabbit hunting with dogs in bushes and dense vegetation where shots are close.

Hope it can help you.

Dom

One thing I made for patterning shotgun shells this year was a clear plastic sheet with circles drawn in a 30" dia. and 20" dia. to lay over the patterns.

It allows you to see the shot distribution at different diameters and find the center of the pattern. It gives you an entirely different visual perspective vs a 30" circle just drawn on the paper.

I really really liked using it.

I couldn't find a full sheet of clear platic big enough so I used binder protectors and clear packing tape to piece it together. It was an suggestion I'd about read online so I'm not taking credit for an original idea.

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Dr. A. C. Jones, author of Sporting Shotgun Performance, has written computer software which allows a shotgun pattern to be scanned into a computer without marking each pellet hole.

The computer then calculates the X and Y coordinates of each pellet hole on the pattern.

It determines the X and Y means, variances, covariances, and the two-dimensional Gaussian distribution and can determine the probability of any pellet or combination of pellets hitting at a given distance from the calculated center of the pattern. By inserting several patterns into the computer, the variation of the shot-to-shot centering (the human error) can be added to the probabilities.

I did something similar to this in my weapons work back during the Cold War for weapons with a little more oomph than trap guns. Am very glad someone has now made this available for sporting gun purposes.

Dr. Jones has measured and recorded tens of thousands of shotgun patterns (millions of pellet holes) in his work.

From Dr. Jones' thousands of measured shotgun patterns, he has concluded that short range (e.g., 13 yard) pattern performance can be used to predict long range pattern performance (e.g., 40 yard).

This makes the piece of paper for the patterns smaller and, more importantly, the walk to the target shorter.

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If a 48" square sheet of paper works for 40 yards, a sheet of paper 1/3 that size (16"x16") should work at 13 yards. You might start with two 11"x17" sheets taped together so you have a 22"x17" sheet. That would allow you to scan your target on a conventional copying machine that has scanner capability if you scanned half of the target at a time and then combined the two halves electronically (or split the analysis into two). You might want to put some reference marks on the combined sheet (where they are taped together) to make matching up the two scanned halves easier.

You might contact Dr. Jones to get his input, as well.

Edit to add:
If you are taking a digital photo for the analysis, you aren't as concerned about scanning ease, but the 1/3 relationship between 13 yds and 40 yds still holds and should help you choose your paper size based off the size of paper people use for 40 yd patterning.

Fascinating! Is the program a computerised version of the Oberfell and Thompson methodology or something totally different?
Cheers...
Con

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Don't think it is.

As I understand Jones' method and the Oberfell and Thompson methodology... I would not describe them as the same or similar.

But there is an Oberfell feature in the software that will do an Oberfell analysis if you want.

There are no shortcuts in Jones' method at all except for the new technology which allows the scanning of the 400+ pellet holes directly from the patterning paper, the accurate recording of their XY coordinates, and the packaged mathematical calculations for the probabilities associated with a two-dimensional Gaussian.

Not positive on this, but think Jones' calculations assume an XY covariance of zero, but again not sure.

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I use a brown paper grocery sack. Put a rock in it so the wind doesn't tip it over.