Does Larger Steel Shot Pattern Tighter than Smaller Shot?

 

We Americans have two driving psychological needs: to be seen as belonging to a group, and to be seen as individualists.  Our great hero is the Cowboy--the lone man not bound by society and it's pettiness, but governed by his own sense or right and wrong, who does justice as he sees it and rides off alone into the sunset.  And yet we wear t-shirts of the biggest sports teams or rock bands to signal our membership in the fan club.  The most comical combination of these impulses is the  punk rock enthusiast meticulously mimicking all the other non-conformists.  

One of the best ways to prove one's individualism within a group is to point out how everyone else in the group is actually wrong about some sub-point of the marginalia.  And so...

 Yet another oft cited piece of Received Wisdom is that larger shot patterns tighter then smaller shot through the same choke.  I've never gotten a straight answer on why this would be the case--perhaps the effects of wind resistance vs mass of the pellet?  And of course, no one ever backs up this rule of thumb with pictures or numbers.  Well, the remedy for this is obvious: make more holes in paper.

12 ga 2.75” Nobel Sport
Cheddite CX2000
30 g Longshot
PT1265 + felts as needed
1 oz steel shot + plastic beads as needed
    A.       #BBB
    B.       #1
    C.      #4
    D.      #6

(By the way, this load is based on one I found in BPI’s Advantages V manual, but using the larger version of the VP/PT wad (to insure fit with the larger shot).  The Nobel Sport hull may not be a proper Cheddite for all I know, but it’s so close I wouldn’t want to live on the difference.  All that said, my use of this load is not a recommendation of it.)

Patterned through a Remington 870 Express with a Rem flush IC at 40 yards

Now this is the average of only three patterns, and therefore not the sturdiest data.  But as always, any data is better then, “everybody knows….” 

A:  76.1%
44/60 = 73.3%
46/60 = 76.7%
47/60 = 78.3%
 
B:  67.6%
60/103 = 58.3%
68/103 = 66.0%
81/103 = 78.6%
 
C:  52.3%
92/192 = 47.9%
99/192 = 51.7%
110/192 = 57.3%
 
C:  58.0%
172/315 = 54.6%
182/315 = 57.8%
194/315 = 61.6%

And some representative patterns:

#BBB 

46/60 = 76.7%

#1

68/103 = 66.0%

#4

99/192 = 51.7%

#6

182/315 = 57.8%

Dare I say, hoisted with my own petard?  

I was hoping, as usual, for more compelling results.  But this is shotgunning, the land of slippery slopes and murky edges, so I’m disappointed, but not shocked when I see the results are mixed.  The #BBB’s did indeed print a higher percentage than the #1’s, which performed better than the #4’s.  But then it breaks down a bit.  If I hadn’t loaded the #6’s, it would have been a nice tidy pattern percentage ladder.  But alas, I was just not quite cut-corner enough.  So as it is, the answer is, again, maybe. 

That one hiccup in the stairsteps really messes everything up.  If the #6’s had given me an average in the 40's, I could enjoy the warm feeling of reaffirming the Group's mantra ("Hey, he's thinking what we're all saying!").  Or, if all four loads had printed all over the place, I could stop right there, defenestrate this Rule of Thumb, and enjoy the warm feeling of being smarter than everyone else.  But unfortunately, I get no warm feelings.  Instead, I'm forced to confront the obvious questions: If I tried the sizes I skipped, would I find it’s just the #6’s being weird in my gun, or would the whole Rule of Thumb fall apart?  Or, if I expanded the shot strings from three to ten, would the #6’s average fall into place behind the #4's?  I also wonder what would happen with the #1's, which have the widest spread between the high and low of all the shot sizes; is that one pattern a fluke, or would they prove to be wilder in that load then the other sizes?

I will mention, if we look at the chart for Loads A, B, and C in my BSLOC Rule test, we see that indeed, for the most part, the larger shot prints a higher percentage than the smaller.  Now, those are all different wads, shot and powder charges, so it’s not the most useful data, but it is supportive (in a glad-handing, rather than helping-hand sort of way). 

This one would bear/bare with some further testing.   But knowing how way leads on to way... I'll probably get interested in something else first.  

 UPDATE:

And just to enhance the whole petard-ary, after I posted this, Joe Hunter shared his numbers... which are far more thorough, and therefor, convincing.  At least it's nice to know I'm not swimming counter to the tide of data.  Shoulders of giants and all that.