Field Testing Steel Shot (1980)

the film you are about to see was made from 1979 to 1980 by the US Department of the Interior fish and wildlife service but was never placed in National Distribution it was intended as a training aid to be used in conjunction with live instruction this is a film primarily about testing ammunition not water foul hunting the purpose of this film was to document the experimental techniques used in field testing steel shot loads through harvesting Wild Water fou in the process of this testing shots were fired over a broad range of distances short medium and long to determine the performance potentials and limitations of the steel shot shell loads tested the film was made on location in Northern California and Southern Oregon some of the steel shot loads and pellet sizes used were experimental at the time of filming but are now available as Factory loads all live Bird shooting scenes are real and were conducted in the presence of four Witnesses the film features a presentation by Tom roster at the time a temporary employee of the fish and wildlife service while segments that depict Mr roster Downing birds at long range with steel shot are accurate representations of his capabilities they may not represent the shooting capabilities of other water foul Hunters the fish and wildlife service continues to urge Hunter caution and discretion regarding appropriate shooting ranges when the film was made the reloading equipment shown was experimental today reloading equipment adaptable to steel shot is commercially available additional information can be obtained from Sporting Goods dealers [Music] ever since the discovery that waterfoul frequently ingest spent lead shotgun shell pellets and May in turn die from lead poisoning a suitable non-toxic substitute for lead shot has been sought many alternative metal types have been considered and tested but to date only steel shot has proven to be both a non-toxic and economically feasible substitute for lead shot because water foul hunting is rich in Tradition there are many strongly held beliefs and opinions about which shotgun gauges shot shell loads and even shot sizes are most effective for hunting ducks or geese however there's been very little research to determine the relative performance of shot shell loads on Wild Water foul under actual field conditions because steel shot is a new shotgun projectile type much needs to be learned about its ballistics that is one of the principal jobs of Tom roster a ballistic specialist who works for the US fish and wildlife service many Hunters are iCal about steel shot being an acceptable substitute for lead shot Tom roster offers some comments on negative attitudes about steel shot I think one of the problems that many hunters and many who Vice that opinion have is that they have simply never taken a lead shotgun shell such as this Remington shell or a steel shotgun shell such as the Winchester shell cut them open remove the pellets and remove the components and I think if if one does that it tells a very revealing story for example if we open up the lead shotgun shell and remove the pellets remove the wad we find in many shells today a one piece wad which consists of a shot cup which contains most of the lead shot a cushioning section which is very important for helping to prevent the lead pellets from being crushed under the forces of combustion and then a over powder section which gives us a good gas seal and proper combustion one opens up a steel shotgun shell you find a a different kind of animal remove the pellets and uh remove the wad you find a in modern ammunition a one piece wad but it's noticeably different in design there's simply a long shot cup and then an overpow section there is no cushioning section because steel shot does not need to be cushioned in order to keep it round we looked at Old steel shot ammunition which I think is a second part of the problem many people have with steel you will find that the ammunition is noticeably different than modern steel shot ammunition the old Remington shells the old Winchester shells for example this one had a roll crimp and a little plastic spin-off wad had troubles with the wads which contain the steel here we can see a wad uh where the steel has impacted in the bottom this causes the wad when coming out of the barrel to Tumble which disrupts patterns some old steel ammunition contain simply a shot wrapper on top of a shot uh of an over powder Wad and this allowed the shot to contact the barrel to a certain extent and probably resulted in some of the complaints that we originally experienced with Barrel or bore scrubbing modern steel wads have eliminated those problems we can see when we recover steel wads we seldom if ever find pellets impacted in the bottom we never or I have seldom if ever found steel pellets that have cut through the dense plastic that's used and because these wads completely contain the shot charge we have eliminated the pallets contacting the barrel and therefore have eliminated Barrel erosion with steel shot ammunition in order to learn how commercial steel shot shell loads perform Tom and his assistants use various hunting areas to test the loads on water foul in the field here at the Tuli Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Northern California Tom gathered some of his data on Winchester and federal steel shot ammunition to measure its Effectiveness in bagging snow geese at 40 yards and Beyond a Remington Model 3200 over and under shotgun was used choked improved modified and full improved modified is a choke constriction that falls between the more common modified and full constrictions the ammunition tested was 2 and 3/4 in 12 gauge 1 and a/4 O loads of numbers four two or one steel shot the most useful shell performance information occurs when only one shot is fired at each bird the flight attitude of the bird when struck by the shot charge is recorded So that an accurate interpretation can be made of which pellet marks are entrance wounds and which are Exit Wounds during the laboratory examination which occurs later also recorded is the behavior of the bird after being hit what you get for distance on that one 466 okay that was an overhead angle and I used a Winchester ounz and a qu load of number two steel all right each bagged bird is individually tagged with a unique code number on this tag is recorded distance the angle of the shot and the type of load this information is also recorded on a field chart so that it can be correlated in the lab when the KNE IES are performed on this particular day five snow geese were collected with the steel shot test loads now the interesting thing about all of those both of those oun and a quarter loads now is they've increased the velocity from 1260 to 1330 ft per each tagged bird is taken to the Oregon Institute of Technology to be x-rayed x-rays are an important tool in helping researchers accurately measure and interpret certain lethality data the x-rays allow the researchers to note the precise location of embedded pellets and also to more accurately measure the depth of penetration okay these x-rays here represent this Goose right here and uh this one was shot from overhead it was flying over like like so and it was shot so the pellet should have gone something like this and this view here represents where these pellets should be in the bird here you can see there's two here in the head you can see two holes there during the necropsy information relating to the total number of entrance and exit wounds is recorded for each bird a probe is inserted into each wound Channel caused by an embedded pellet when the probe makes contact with the pellet the depth of the wound channel from the pellet to the skin line is marked on the probe with the fingers this depth is then compared to the image on the X-ray and if there is a close relationship between the two the distance is then measured on a meter stick and recorded on the data sheet as the depth of penetration okay now one thing I noce you got a pallet looks like it's embedded here in the knee looks like you got two embedded in the head could you dig those out for me so I could see the change if any in spir now you've got an embedded pellet in the head under the skin right they came up here under the uh throat here and one of them embedded right here just under the skin went to the schol in other words it penetrated from here all the way through the head and ended up under the skin the reason I asked that we get a lot of people who find pellets Under the Skin but because they didn't keep a record on which angle they shot the bird at they incorrectly assume that that pellet somehow just went under the skin and lodged there but in this case because we know that it was an overhead shot we know that the pellet entered at the throat penetrated all the way through the head and ended up just under the skin at the top of the head which we can then remove and study for uh deformation okay and there's the pellet the interesting thing about steel pellets are that when you examine them after they've been removed from the bird no matter how far theyve penetrated they're seldom if ever deformed because some sizes of steel shot are as yet unavailable to the public in commercial ammunition the service occasionally assembles its own ammunition in order to gain familiarity with the potential of various pellet sizes at the time this film was made both number six and number BB steel were being tested load the number six steel shot with a federal steel shot 2 3/4 in 12 gauge Hall a steel shot wad which I have the pedal pre-bent so it fits into the wad guide on a progressive Pon nness worn press because we can crank steel shot out at a high rate simply insert the wad pull the handle and press we have a loaded steel shot number six steel and I have loaded up some numbers BB steel you can see that the crimps are fully the equivalent of a factory load and I code them a little bit differently than the number six steel with a magic marker the experimental ammunition is loaded to similar velocity levels and shot charge weights as available in commercial ammunition testing of the 2 and 3/4 in 12 gauge 1 and8 ounce load of number BB steel was begun during winter hunting conditions the test site was north of clamo Falls Oregon and the temperature that day was about 15° fah roster decided to collect data first on the performance of The Experiment Al number BB steel loads on relatively close shots at Canada geese that is goose hunting over decoys he chose to use open chokes in this case ski chokes in order to increase his opportunity to hit the target at close ranges improved cylinder chokes which are only slightly tighter than ski chokes would also be appropriate for shooting at this [Music] distance okay how far was that last shot it was 42 yards all right that was our left ride and B1 mhm data gathered by the US fish and wildlife service on load performance are provided to both the Munitions industry and to water foul hunters for their consideration 51 okay let's let's tag this and see here it had a couple pretty good chest hits and that was a B1 died immediately some Hunters have reported that when using steel shot to hunt Canada geese their Birds would often times fall to the ground as cripples and either run or fly off we found however that during this test if the Canada geese were properly caught in a pattern of size BB steel they were cleanly bagged this day's activities provided performance data on size BB steel over ranges of 20 to 50 yards nine birds were bagged with 10 shells that day roster frequently invites water foul Hunters to help him gather data on steel shot performance he had heard that professional water foul hunting guide shell block had been volunte barly shooting steel shot in the Tully Lake California area because of Shell's extensive experience with shooting steel shot roster contacted him and asked him to relate his experiences using commercially available steel shot ammunition most of my shooting was from 40 yards and Beyond and I did favor the number two and the number one steel for that for what ducks or for ducks primarily although I did shoot quite a few geese with him what what geese no what kind uh the geese were mainly white fronts and snow geese I had very few opportunities to take any of the Canada geese over the decoys the number four steel work very well for ducks very well well this this is kind of interesting because now you must have read in a lot of the outdoor magazines and places uh a lot of concern with crippling losses with this stuff people are really worried they'd get more crippling loss after you well first of all how many uh how many birds did you end up shooting with this stuff well I shot about a total of 500 ducks and geese with it well what about cripples what did you uh the number of cripples I had seemed to be much less shooting the steel than I've ever had with the lead no get it and another interesting thing was when uh we would get a bird down like on the water and uh it was trying to escape to the tulies or something uh I would shoot at it on the water and I was able to kill it with just a first shot or two with steel whereas sometimes when I'd shoot lead at him in past years it'd take me four five six shells to get him killed that's really interesting was holding much tighter pattern and uh was very easy to kill him on the water with it Tom roster and shell block then began collecting data on the performance of experimental loads of number six steel and Commercial loads of number two steel for pass shooting ducks at long ranges shell decided to use his Remington Model 870 pump with full choke Barrel can you pick a drake Mard yeah here's one on the left this duck was hit with an ounce and an eighth load of number six steel at just over 43 yards here comes another Bunch big Drake straight up okay I got for this shot Tom used his ski choke model 3200 that was a good one you get a distance on that yeah it was 57 yards okay that him with number two steel just that was a straight overhead shot on this day a total of 16 Drake mards and two pin tails were taken with 28 shots using both the experimental number six and number two steel loads primarily it ranges Beyond 55 yards 40 to 60 yard Tom then traveled to William Finley National Wildlife Refuge near Corvalis Oregon to gather information on the performance of size BB steel for long range shooting at Canada geese before beginning the day's activities roster explained to Shell block and research assistant Gary Ivy that William Finley provides primarily pass shots at Canada geese between ranges of 50 and 70 yards the researchers then moved to an opening in the woods in order to provide them the long range pass shots they desired and they awaited the arrival of the geese okay uh this was the goose we we just bagged and what kind of distance did you get on that 60 yards okay and I um used the the oun and e a number BB steel and that was what an overhead angle yeah all right well this was our second bird we got on the pass shoot was a uh right to left bird and what distance did you get for Gary I got 69 yards okay so he got 69 yards through the rangefinder instrument and I shot this with the BB reload that travels 1390 ft per second used the improved modified choke and the bird was dead immediately I can see for sure that there's one two three four and five pellet strikes in the chest this is the second bird a right to left about 52 53 yard shot we can see one two three pellet strikes for sure in this bird plus a wing break when we get done autops in it we'll determine for sure how many pellet Stags I use BB steel to collect all of these which we got 153 two about 60 and two right around 70 yards back in the laboratory the ne Cropsies then revealed the story on the number of pellet strikes and their location on each Goose on this overhead Goose remember this one sailed over the trees and fell in the field dead behind us and the dog retrieved it it was about a 60 yard shot again with an improved modified choke and I used the ow to number BB steel we can see very clearly on the autopsy sheet the location of those pellet marks and they were in the back half of the bird so the bird usually doesn't fall dead as quickly if they're hit the back half so a struck with a total of four pellets of which none exited leaving a total of four embedded shot you can see on the X-ray then the location of the four embedded number BB steel pellets we can see them the depth of penetration this one penetrated through to here one through to here one through to here learning to shoot steel shot well just like learning to shoot lead shot well can only be attained by practice Tom relates his experience before doing any collecting of performance data with steel shot I had to first train myself to shoot with it I used the ski range and got permission from the owner to stand back at 40 to 45 yards in order to practice what to me were the distances and angles that commonly occur during waterfall hunting I soon learned that for a person like myself who has shot many rounds of lead shot throughout his lifetime that learning to shoot steel was no all easy task initially I did a lot of missing before learning finally to consistently hit with steel and I soon discovered another big truth it took a lot of practice one thing this experience did teach me though every Hunter will need some practice to become a good shot with steel in listening to Hunters throughout the country talking about shooting steel shot roster soon noted a pattern the more experience a hunter had with shooting lead the more difficulty he seemed to have in learning to shoot steel so roster contacted his old shooting coach world champion ski shooter Walt bador to see if and how boric could learn to shoot steel shot learning to shoot steel okay now tell me the basic difference between shooting steel and Lead as far as the velocity and the different leads at different ranges are concerned all right what we know about steel at this time is first of all you're going to have a tighter pattern than you're used to with LED shot secondly because the pellets of Steel stay round you're going to have a shorter shot string in terms of velocity the lead loads you've been shooting are about 1200 ft per second and the steel loads are about 1365 to make the comparison roster first asked boric to shoot with lead shot target loads he had him shoot at station five at a skite range which presents a 90° angle Target at 21 yard distance okay now Walt we've gone through uh the basics of shooting and you've shot with lead shot now we're going to switch to steel shot what are you going to do different now when you shoot steel than when you shot lead well we'll shoot high five again here and when you shoot lead shot that lead's about 3 feet so I think the first thing I'll do is cut my lead about in half so I'll try to look at about a foot and a half lead it's going to be a little difficult to teach myself to look for a shorter lead but I'll try to look for a shorter lead but do the same thing I've always done with lead and that is follow on through and keep you hit on the stock and and just cut the lead down and see how that works to start with all right let's try that okay want to do another one lights a little lower now oh okay let's talk about that one a little bit Walt okay what happened on that shot do you think well I might not had enough enough lead I was trying to concentrate on cutting the lead back and I think I didn't have enough lead but I'm not positive and I could have shot over the target a little bit I just I really can't tell you right now all right let's try it again got that one good Walt yeah I think what I did on the other one was cut the lead back down just a little bit too much and didn't quite have enough lead and the target got away on me all right so what kind of lead do you think you're using now that you're hitting it well I'm cutting my lead about a about and a half so I'm down to about a foot and a half over lead shot lead of 3 ft all right okay well that was uh interesting that 21 yards it looks like you definitely made an adjustment cut down your lead and we're hitting pretty good with steel now coming back here to about 43 yards we'll be breaking the target I think it's important to practice back here because that's where a lot of duck Hunters shoot their birds and uh we'll uh we'll have to make some more adjustments here okay now Walt the steel there now you've uh missed a couple missed several and hit a couple what seems to be the problem I think on steel being your shot string is so much shorter you have to be a much more disciplined shooter in other words once you get your lead you have to pull the trigger you can't wait on that Target because you don't have that long shot string to pick up the tail of the target all right so you have to be much more aggressive uh when you're shooting steel shot I think that's the only difference right now so you think when you're breaking those targets you're slapping that trigger the instant you see that lead right once you get the lead that you want you pull the trigger there's no problem but if you wait and hesitate and try to measure the target just a little bit because of the difference of the shot string then you find yourself missing the target okay I want you to go out there and work hard and see if you slap that trigger when you see that lead if we get more bricks all right all right broke that one good real good some people have theorized that downed birds that are not dead are more likely to escape in the dense vegetation of a wetland environment than on dry land a dense Marsh is an excellent place to examine this question some of these data were collected in the marshes of lower clth National Wildlife Refuge in Northern California since Tom roster was in the process of testing the performance of light 12 gauge loads of number four and number two steel shot he asked Walt bador if he would be interested in helping besides gaining more information with Walt's help Tom also wanted to learn how much difficulty an experienced lead shot shooter like boric would have in applying what he had learned shooting steel shot on the practice range to shooting water foul under actual field conditions after several more days of clay target practice water aged to meet Tom at lower climet for the test roster chose to use a Remington 3200 over and under choked improved cylinder and modified boric brought along a miroku over and under choked modified and full after a short journey into the marsh the decoys were set out and the men waited for the evening flight boric missed shots at the first two mards with his full choked Barrel at a distance of a little over 35 yd roster then began shooting he took this Mard at about 25 yards with an improved cylinder choke and a federal one in an8 ounce load of number four steel well Tom you hit those last Birds pretty good right well uh what I did is I used my improved cylinder Barrel I cranked out a little extra lead cuz I was going to school on what you were doing there looked like you were shooting behind a little bit and I kept saying to myself well I would leted about the same way he was CU I was looking down your Barrel but it wasn't quite enough so I cranked out a little bit more lead I'd say boric then switched to his modified choke and increased his leads for his next few shots boric took this Drake Mard at about 40 yards using a federal 1 and8 ounce load of number four Steel boric took this malard at a measured 48 yards with his modified choke using a federal 1 and8 ounce load of number four steel this duck is typical of what the researchers call a behavior one bird that is dead or immobile almost immediately roster took the remaining shots for the day which ran between 40 and 55 yards steel shot is a sharp break from the lead shot traditions and it requires some adjustments in your thinking and your shooting determining which steel loads and chokes are best for your hunting situation will require some testing by you it took a good part of your life to learn how to use lead shot so allow some time for practice with steel shot by the end of the day Walt had bagged six Mard Drakes with 15 shots and Tom had bagged five Mard Drakes with six [Music] shots