Cartridges

On boxing Day I decided to sort out all the cartridges I had chucked into a box from the bottom of my shooting bag and skeet vest pockets after a shoot. I had about 200 of all makes from comp X to jockers to black gold and express supremes. I sorted them into sizes and put them in boxes. I've shot the last two reg shoots with them and scored a 88 and 86 my highest scores for a few months. Do cartridges make any difference?

chippy said:

 Do cartridges make any difference?

Click to expand...

Only in your head - as you've just proved!!   

I did a similar thing many years ago, but with a mix of wads plastic/fibre. Strangely enough I saw no perceptible difference either   !

Its just what you get used to, recoil might change but little difference in performance. Shot two rounds one with plaswads and one with fibre, scored better with fibre by a few clays. 

I am sure any shell on todays market  is so much more consistent than me as a shooter !     but  if you believe in a particular one    I am sure its a advantage ,    

The only one that I could notice any difference was comp X which was much softer than all the others.

I usually do this if i am going out with friends for a practice. It just uses up all the odds and sods accumulated over time. I do try to stick with one brand for comps though.

Yup, cart choice is another head game thing for us normal mortals, I find the sort that make a loud bang when you pull the trigger are generally best...

I have just tried some Bornaghi game cartridges. They worked just fine and are £100 per thousand less than the major brand equivalents...…

I may have to pattern test  a few -  just to convince myself that they are okay !! 

Cartridges do funny things to your head, especially when they cost £350 a thousand. 

For most sporting targets they don't make any noticeable difference. I shot a round yesterday with most of it shot with 21g 9s and broke the targets ok enough. They were rubbish on the ABT though.  Out of a round of 10 I hit 3 first barrel with them in ghe first  and 6 second barrels using 28g 7.5 Fblacks  in the second. 

so I guess they can in principle break them but not reliably

Good practice for using the second barrel. 

What Cosmicblue said

My skill set is so limited that my cart choice is boundless - OK, almost.  Although 9's will work in many instances I only use them for skeet.  AFA 71/2's and 8's are concerned for the most part I don't really care since the games I shoot don't seem to either, the only exception being the zippy 28gm/7.5's(2nd bbl) and 8's(1st bbl) I use for ZZ's.  I suppose that the bigger shot will break targets at longer distances but I've killed targets at stupid distances (for me) with 8's.  I used 8's in the 1st barrel for pigeons even.  So the position that I enjoy is being able to buy and shoot whatever is on sale.  And that usually comes to about $200/K around here.  Not having to do cart nit picking is one of my few joys in shopping but a substantial one.

Sorry for jumping in a bit late:

I tend to agree that if you have a mix of good quality cartridges it won't matter, if you put the shot in the right place the result should be predictable,  HOWEVER, due to my inner demons, I have got to a point where I don't want to mix them up at all, there is an advantage in using all one brand/shot size and that is that you don't have to even think about your ammo and that's one thing less to worry about. If I have one odd cartridge In my pocket I have to think about when to use it, which target? which barrel etc. and I just don't want that distraction.  All I want to think about is where to put the shot.