Letters

Picking Nits

Thanks again for another excellent issue of a great magazine. Admittedly, the first portion of July/August that I read was the Letters column. With regard to Mr. Pazereskis' letter, I personally enjoyed the recent article on Krieghoff ("The House of Krieghoff," May/June). Thanks to Uncle Sam, I lived in Germany for six years and have a strong affection for Continental sporting guns. If that is what Mr. Pazereskis has to gripe about and spend his time writing letters about, he needs to find better ways to spend his time.

My only minor nit while carefully digesting everything in the issue, as usual, is that the article on the Olin Elsie (Guns of the Concours) perhaps has the wrong firearm pictured, as the photo shows a single-trigger gun, whereas the article describes a double-trigger gun. But there are more important things to worry about . . . .

Keep up the great work. I admit I often spend time looking at firearms that I don't own, simply to educate myself and identify features learned from your magazine.

Todd McCullough
Via e-mail

Regarding the Olin Elsie in July/August, the picture isn't lying. The gun has only one trigger.


Picturing Shotstrings

Some recent articles in your magazine piqued my interest in finding photo evidence of shotstring formation. Queries to Federal, Remington and Winchester yielded no results. This irked me, as I expected that the ammunition suppliers would have this type of information. Do you or any of your many experts have this information? Several of your authors talk about shotstring size and shape but don't provide hard evidence, just "take my word" type of banter. High-speed cameras have been around for decades along with strobe lights for illumination. A set with cameras top and side, backgrounds of white with graduated lines at intervals of five feet, say chokings of Skeet, Improved Cylinder and Modified, and No. 4, 71/2 and 9 shot, with a time base from the sound of the shot? Maybe some industry or government studies are available to inquirers with your "credentials"?

Yes, I realize that the combinations of variables are very large, but we hobbyists need your assistance . . . . I'm tired of hearing the BS. Show me the data and photos.

Tony Bierek
Burton, Michigan


Tom Roster responds:

What you want, you're not going to get: photographs of downrange shotstrings. Here's why.

Although, as you presume, it would seem simple to just set up high-speed cameras with strobes to photograph shotstrings against light-colored backgrounds at several points downrange, the challenge is much greater. The biggest problem is that as clouds of shot move downrange, the tiny pellets rapidly develop a great deal of distance between one another, and it becomes very difficult if not impossible with current equipment to capture an image on film or digitally showing clearly the length and diameter of the string, as the leading, following and outermost pellets become virtually invisible to the camera. The diameter can be photographed clearly by photographing the pellet images produced when the shotstring strikes a stationary metal plate or large sheet of paper (pattern testing).

There are images available-and infrequently published-of shotstrings emerging from gun muzzles. Current camera setups are capable of clearly photographing these phenomena out to about 15 feet from the muzzle. Beyond that distance, no one on the planet, to my knowledge, has usable shotstring photographs.

Because of the difficulty of using photography to gather images of or measure lengths of shotstrings, those entities that have measured shotstrings have done so either using revolving drums or acoustical methodologies. These do not provide a usable image but do yield an accurate measure of the length and diameter of a given shotstring at a given distance. Even then -and because the shotstring becomes so large in diameter and so long at distances of 40 yards and beyond-the size of the measuring equipment required becomes so cumbersome and unwieldy that efforts to measure shotstrings virtually cease beyond 20 yards in most cases-and as far as I am aware, no farther than 40 yards.

You can kind of get an idea of shotstring length by looking at the photographs of the effect of shotstringing on long sheets of paper that Bob Brister's wife towed behind a station wagon while Bob shot at the paper. Please see Brister's book Shotgunning: The Art and the Science. Within it you also will find reference to my work. Please remember, however, (and without a lengthy explanation) that when you look at the photographs that Brister took, whatever images of shotstringing were captured by his method, in all cases the images are actually much shorter than what the real string length was.

The whole business of measuring shotstrings and counting patterns is very labor-intensive. It is much less expensive and much simpler to gather and photograph exterior and terminal ballistic information about single projectiles of significant size, such as bullets, than about projectiles made up of hundreds of tiny objects such as shotshell pellets.

When I was on the faculty at Oregon Institute of Technology in the late '70s, I wanted to undertake a downrange shotstring photography/measurement project such as you are looking for. I worked up a bare-bones budget at that time, which came pretty close to $400,000. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any funding source. So, unless you have the time and the huge amount of money at today's rates necessary to invent and then implement a means of photographically capturing shotstrings downrange and then invest/pay for the thousands of man-hours necessary to conduct the actual testing (not to mention reporting time and publication expenses), you'll have to remain satisfied with measurements of shotstring effect rather than accurate images of it.


Trulock Rings True

Kudos to Tom Roster for the nice article on Trulock chokes (Shot Talk, May/June). I have six of the company's chokes and no doubt will purchase more, as they have never let me down. Not only does Trulock produce a dependable product, as Mr. Roster writes, but the company stands behind its products as few companies do these days. Senior management at Trulock has a real "hands on" approach to any customer concern, and they are always available to anyone. Added to this is the location of Trulock's home offices, which are in Whigham, Georgia, in the heart of Thomasville, Cairo, etc.-South Georgia dove/quail heaven. In this area the chokes are really put to the test. Again, thanks for the nice article that put a spotlight on a great company.

Dr. Andrew Kelley
Saratoga Springs, New York


We appreciate receiving your comments, criticisms and suggestions. Please send correspondence to Letters, Shooting Sportsman, PO Box 1357, Camden, ME 04843; editorial@shootingsportsman.com.

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