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From: mitchell@metaphor.metaphor.com (Greg Mitchell)
Newsgroups: rec.hunting
Subject: Re: steel shot
Message-ID: <441@erb1.engr.wisc.edu>
Date: 27 Mar 91 13:02:45 GMT
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From: mitchell@metaphor.metaphor.com (Greg Mitchell)
In article <427@erb1.engr.wisc.edu> eburns@ADS.COM (Edward Burns) writes:
>In article <423@erb1.engr.wisc.edu> mitchell@metaphor.metaphor.com (Greg Mitchell) writes:
>>Can anyone explain why steel shot produces a tighter pattern than lead ?
>
>Steel is so hard, that when the shell is fired the pellets don't deform
>under the impact.  With lead many do, and the deformed pellets don't
>fly true so they don't stay in the useful area of the pattern.
                                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>Ed

OK, this is the answer I was expecting. Except that now I am getting mixed
messages as to whether the pattern produced by lead shot is more or less
desireable than that produced by steel ( see my underlining above ).
Most of the posts on this subject seemed to complain about the tighter
pattern of steel for the kind of shooting that was being done. However
this reply seems to imply that with lead, pellets are wasted by deviating
too far from the center-line of trajectory leaving not enough pellets
in the required concentration to down the target.

In any case what I am trying to lead up to is this, if too-round steel shot
produces too-tight patterns why not make steel shot that is not perfectly
round so that it will spread out in flight ?  Since steel is as hard as it
is it seems it would be possible to reliably produce and deploy pellets
that would produce a specific pattern spread with a given choke. Shot
producers could offer shot with a variety of patterning characteristics.

Lead is a nasty thing to have in the food chain. I understand it is for
this reason that lead shot is being prohibited for certain hunting use.
IMHO, if steel shot can be used with anywhere near the effectiveness of
lead it just does not seem reasonable to use lead.

-- Greg