Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Winchester Collectors Tell me about 42's

42 skeet with Super-X 7.5's,12 yards.

Winchester AAHS is the best hull for reloading. Couple flats factory ammo gets you 500 empties. Figure 10 reloads per hull. That will match up with a 5k sleeve of primers, a 5k case of wads, about 12# of Winchester 296 (same as H-110), and just over 6 bags of Magnum #9 shot.

The Remington hull is less desirable for reloading, tho as a factory load the STS is probably the best.

Have used and patterned .410 constrictions from cyl to full (0.000" to 0.020"). Even with #9 pellets H5 and L3 skeet presentations get iffy with cyl. The canard about .410 constrictions not mattering lives on but is demonstrably false. A fringed "full" pattern can give you the same quality break as a centered "cyl". But the pattern board does not lie with apples to apples comparisons. Most top tier NSSA shooters use about 5-10 thou constriction, sometimes more, with best quality ammunition. The NSCA game sometimes gives us 35-40 yd targets. One of my M class buddies uses as much as 18 thou and is good enough to make use of it.

guys bring 410's to my trap range and will get around 7 or 8.
they do MUCH better on skeet.

My 42 was the Browning reproduction clone. The previous owner sent it to Briley for tubes. I used the modified in the field and the skeet for skeet. The best average I could build with it on skeet was 82/100. Took it along on a work trip over to Pierre one time on the way back I called Willow Crk to see if they would open for us. Met Bob Stoeser's wife at the club house.my bud used his red label and I used mine.i broke a 34/50 and made the comment that I might as well used my 410. That got a laugh from Bob's wife and the time I was shooting skeet league every week with it. I looked at my buddy and said we got the time? He said sure. So I told her I would shoot the second round and went and got my 42. I was shooting AA hull ,296, 1/2 oz 9,s in the clay buster clone of the AA. Long story short I broke a 40/50 with that 410. It was on the leader board for many years as high score with the 410. Fun gun but if a guy thinks he can do better than 85% he's dreaming.
Mb

25 at skeet....no problem.Same pattern as the 12 gauge,just less dense.

Shotgun shells have come a long way since the days of the 42. The 410 lacks bore diameter and payload to develop the kinds of patterns that you might expect from a larger bore. If you look at the shot column of a loaded 410 shell, it is much longer than it is wide. The 28 is the opposite, it is very square. This is the innate disadvantage of the 410 to any other common shotgun bore/gauge.

Modern wads preserve the roundedness of shot as they travel through the bore much better than old wads and shot cups of yore. Old shotguns were designed for the wads and shot cups of the time. Nowadays, loads retain their pattern much better simply because the modern shotgun shell wad does a better job of protecting and containing the load as it travels down the bore. As a result, much less choke (less constriction) is needed to keep your pattern tight at distance.

I typically hunt doves with an IC or light mod and ALWAYS kill more birds than my buddies who are stuck on using MOD or tighter chokes. Some of that is skill, but a lot is understanding that you need much less choke than you might think to kill birds at distance.

If I had a full choke 410, and that’s what most model 42 and other shotguns of the time were choked in, I might try using reclaimed shot or a lighter load. This will ruffle some feathers too, but if I was serious about shooting birds on the wing with a full choke 42, I would entertain the idea of having the choke opened up, especially if the gun was more a shooter as opposed to a collector grade gun. More likely, if I had a full choke 42, I might relegate it to rabbit or squirrel duty.

If you still had that gun I’d suggest acquiring a cylinder choke for the gun and see what that does to your skeet scores.

Amen

No Jeff that gun and I parted company manymoons a go.

I’ve yet to have one. Have several model 12s, but the 42 is still something for the future. One day…

I have found that choke is very insignificant in the .410 bore; none pattern very well, all increasingly lousy as range gets past about 25 yards.

A bit of the discussion above was about skeet chokes, and somebody noted that his skeet choke miked about IM (.009” or so). No accident. It seems skeet shooters in the late ‘40s or early ‘50s complained about targets slipping through the looser pattern (constriction then was about .003”), so Winchester tightened them up and still labeled them skeet.

Shoot high quality ammo with hard shot. I recommend buying several flats of AA skeet or sporting clays loads, reload the empties. The Winchester HS hull is good.

Have four prewar "skeet" stamped barrels. They mic 3, 5, 7, 8 thou. My postwars mic 10 and 11 thou.

The 3 thou gun gives weaker 3, 4, 5 crosser breaks. Even so, it gives better breaks than a "cyl" stamped gun......unless cutting targets in half is the goal.

My uncle bought one in 1937 in Lions Colorado. Used it for a few years until 1940 when he joined the navy. He used it to kill pheasants mostly.
I inherited it in 1996. I make more hits on flying game with it then I do with any other shotgun. At 30 to 35 yards it doesn't hammer the birds as much as my 12 or even my 20, but I miss less when hunting with it.

I just love that gun.

If you don’t mind my asking, what is the barrel length and how is it choked?

Thanks

it's a full choke and 28"

historically, the way i remember it, Winchester choked their skeet chokes ws1 = 3 thousands, and ws2 = 5 thousands.

As I mentioned earlier, Winchester changed to tighter .410 skeet chokes in the early/mid 50s. For several years, I had a 1957 Model 42 Skeet gun whose skeet choked measured .009”.

Winchester stamped "skeet" on 42s (.410), and also on M-12s and 21s in 28 ga. There are very rare factory exceptions. One is a hand-stamped WS-1 on Model 42s having the 2nd type vent rib. Those guns fall within a narrow SN range. There are many "Winchester reinventions" out there.

WS-1 and WS-2 were the skeet choke designations for 12, 16, and 20 ga - all models. Constrictions of WS-1s and WS-2s varied as with WW field choke designations. 12 ga WS-1s often have 6 to 9 thou. 16s and 20s usually have less. All 20 ga WS-1s I've measured had 3 thou. WS-2s are tighter, often approximating "mod". My WS-2 20s have around 10 thou.

Your observation is interesting, Sam, as I have had several 12 gauge Model 12s, and 21s too, whose WS-1 choke was in fact a reverse choke, or bell at the muzzle. The late model skeet gun I kept (prior to the Y series) is that way.

Most of the 42 skeet guns I've seen had Cutts on them. Not necessary for recoil reduction but served as a barrel weight to keep the swing smooth. Visually to me repugnant to take a sweet 42 and burden it with a Cutts but I been told they served their purpose..mb