Until something better is invented for the purpose of trying guns and cartridges, strawboard racks and Pettitt pads are the only means open to the shooter, and besides, when properly used, are the best means. Both vary in thickness and hardness, the latter according to the weather. But every shooter can arrange for a trial against a gun he knows, and against hand-filled black powder cartridges. Then, if he uses his “trial horse” against the same pads and boards as the other gun, or new cartridges, he will arrive at correct comparative results. This is not only the most effective but the cheapest way. If strawboards are used, the first and last boards can be renewed for each shot. The chances of having a shot pass through an already made shot hole are too remote and unimportant to matter. Then the way to assess penetration is to count the shot that struck the first board or sheet of paper, and the number that pierced the last, arranging the last in such a position that about one-half those pellets that hit the first paper also go through the last. This takes the mean penetration of the load, and was Colonel Hawker’s method. The results will then read something like this: .41, .50, .60, .55 of total shot through, say, 20 sheets of brown paper Pettitt pad.
The true way of testing the energy of the shot is by means of the ballistic pendulum, but although the author has designed a more simple apparatus than the usual device of this sort, it is not yet sufficiently tried to warrant its description.
To the very few who load their own cartridge-cases the author can offer no advice beyond this: the best cases and wadding, and the best powder, meaning the highest priced, are necessary, and not merely luxuries. The amateur loader has no means of testing powders to see if they fluctuate, and he must rely, therefore, on the maker; and that very careful person will take the most trouble over that for which he charges most. The shooter, in fact, is not buying raw material, but personal care and trouble. There is a possibility of a professional loader varying his method to suit fluctuations in strength and rapidity of powder. He can do it by means of the turnover, or by adding to or reducing the charge; but this is outside the range of the amateur’s skill. He would not know what was wanted. Even the best nitro powders do vary, batch for batch, and also by reason of the heat of the weather as well as by that of their storehouse.
The best place to keep cartridges in during the winter is the gun-room with a fire, and in the summer in the gun-room also, if it is dry enough not to require a fire; but the principal safeguard is to keep cartridges and their bags and magazines out of the sun as much as possible. The sun will easily raise the so-called “pressure” by about a ton per square inch in some cartridges. How much this may really be it is difficult to even suggest, but Lieutenant Hardcastle has estimated that “pressures” are not reliable within 30 per cent., and the author would have said by more. Fifty per cent. added is a very different proportion to 50 per cent. of reduction. In one case it is as 2 to 3, and in the other case it is as 2 to 1.
WITH PLENTY OF FREEDOM FOR GOOD LATERAL SWING
THE THEORY OF SHOOTING
Many scientific calculations have been made with a view to improving the shooting of sportsmen, or at least of interesting them. Two, which are in theory unassailable, have appeared very often indeed in the unanswerable form of figures and measurements, and nevertheless they are both misleading, and even wrong, in the crude form in which they have been left. One of these is based on the calculation that the shot and the game can only meet provided a certain fixed allowance in front of moving game is given. The calculations are quite correct, but they have no application to sport, for the simple reason that they neglect to calculate the reduction of the theoretical allowance in front, supposed to be necessary, but not all imperative because of the swing of the gun. In other words, the gunner, however expert he may be, does not know exactly where his gun points at the instant the tumbler falls, let alone the instant the shot leaves the barrel. Between the instant of pulling the trigger and the shot leaving the barrel a swinging gun will have moved some unknown distance, and this represents additional unobserved allowance. An inch of this movement at the muzzle of the gun becomes an allowance of 40 inches in as many yards of range. It will be necessary to refer to this unconscious allowance again directly, because it has a bearing upon the second oft-stated proposition.
It is this: mental perceptions in various individuals range from quick to slow, and besides this the muscular action due to mental orders and nerve impulses also range from slow to quick. Both these well-known facts are constantly asserted to necessitate an added allowance in front of game by the slow individual. In practice, however, these slow individuals never admit the yards of allowance that they are supposed to need to allow in front of fast crossing game. It has occurred to the author to question whether the man of slow perception and of slow muscular obedience does need to allow more than the quick individual. Probably it is exactly the reverse; and he has to see less space between the muzzle and the game than the quicker man and than he of what is mistakenly called less personal error.
The “personal error” seems to be in assuming that the slow individual does not subconsciously know his own speed, and compensate for it.