The Best Gauge

For all practical purposes, today’s hunter has a realistic choice of five shotgun gauges: 12, 16, 20, 28 and .410. Siblings have rivaled and single malts have been spilled over the supposed advantages of one or the other. Mountains of total twaddle have been written on the subject, something to which I have gleefully contributed. Is one gauge really better than another?

The four-gauge competition of American-style skeet is sometimes used as a comparator. Twelve, 20 and 28 averages of the better shooters are often within a few hundredths of a percentage point, with the .410 further down but not all that far. If you go by those skeet numbers, gauge doesn’t really make much of a difference. Then again, with all respect to William Harnden Foster, today’s game of skeet isn’t exactly the real hunting world.

A sporting clays comparison might be somewhat more helpful. Around 1990, shortly after the dawn of sporting clays in the US, it was my privilege to shoot with the Connecticut Travelers Sporting Clays Association (www.ctsca.org). This was—and remains today—a marvelous group of New England sporting clays shooters that meets once a month for very challenging “Travelers Tough” targets, Brobingnagian luncheons and pleasant camaraderie at one of the many local sporting courses.

Many of the members are hunters in addition to clays shooters. I thought that it would be fun to come up with some kind of handicap that would let the hunters compete with their hunting guns on a more or less even footing with the dedicated clays shooters using their long-barreled 12s. The Travelers sporting courses are always difficult. They don’t do “skeet in the woods.” I wanted to come up with a handicap system that would let the “little” guns compete on the same course.

After trying various numbers and watching the results for more than half a year, the handicap over a 100-bird event that resulted was:

12 gauge: Scratch
16 gauge: +3
20 gauge: +5
28 gauge: +10
.410 bore: +20
Pump or Side-by-Side: +5 additional

For example, if you used a Model 42, you got 25 birds added to your 100-bird score (+20 for .410, +5 for pump). A 16-gauge Model 21 would add 8 (+3 for 16, +5 for side-by-side). A 28-gauge autoloader or over/under would get 10 birds. And so on.

To everyone’s surprise, including mine, the handicap system actually worked. People could bring their hunting guns onto the sporting course and actually have a chance to win. There wasn’t any advantage to using a sub-gauge, but it did almost even the playing field.

This clay target sporting clays handicap made me wonder whether the numbers might apply to the real world of hunting. If you use a 28-gauge in the field, will you be 90 percent as successful as you would with a 12 (reflecting the 10-bird handicap at clays)? Is the 20-gauge 95 percent as good as the 12?

Obviously there are all sorts of variables other than gauge. I certainly wouldn’t defend a 5-percent handicap for the side-by-side versus the O/U in some places. In heavy grouse cover I prefer the side-by-side because I can “lose” the thin O/U barrels against the dark trees. In pass-shooting longer birds I do think that the O/U has the edge in precision. The handicap numbers also don’t take into account the different weights and handling characteristics of guns in the different gauges. Little guns handle differently than big guns.

Of course payloads also play a major part. In the sporting clays scenario the rules for the maximum amount of shot differ with the gauge. Twelve is 1-1/8 oz, 20 is 7/8, 28 is 3/4 and .410 is 1/2. In hunting you easily can use 1 ounce in 12, 16, 20 and 28. In the field 1 ounce out of a 20 is pretty close to as effective as 1 ounce from a 12.

But... if you used the most popular effective loads in the gauges (1-1/4-oz 12, 1-oz 20, 3/4-oz 28, and so on), there really would be a significant payload penalty for going smaller. A lighter payload means a smaller effective pattern. Has to be. Got to be. Yes, I know that the 16 and 28 are magic, but they aren’t that magic. Less is less. Given optimal chokes, you do have to “hold tighter” with a 3/4-oz 28 than a 1-1/4-oz 12. So maybe the sporting clays handicap numbers have some relevance. What do you think?

In your experience does the gauge handicap bear any relation to reality in the field? Do you take less game (or pass up more shots) with sub-gauges, or are you like the skeet shooters to whom gauge doesn’t matter that much? Does your choice of gun depend more on weight and handling than gauge? If you have a favorite sub-gauge for a particular bird, which is it and why?

’Tis a pleasant puzzlement, that’s for sure. Boots off. Beer open.