450 
FOREST AND STREAM 
August, 1920 
The Man Above 
is BART LEWIS the 
American Professional 
Trapshooting Champion 
He holds, many wonderful 
records, the most notable of 
which is his score of 
200 Straight 200 
from the 18-yd. mark, made at 
time he won his Championship 
title. An Unprecedented and 
Unbeatable Professional Trap- 
shooting Performance. 
Perfect from Primer to Crimp’ 
Send for Four Aces and a King ” 
Mention this Magazine 
OVERLOADED SHOTGUNS 
THERE IS A CONSTANT TENDENCY NOWADAYS 
TO SHOOT TOO HEAVY A CHARGE OF SHOT 
By WILLIAM A. BRUETTE 
HILE looking over and 
analyzing- a series of 
tests of various shot- 
gun systems of boring 
and shell-loading that 
have been recently 
conducted at the 
Forest and Stream 
Shooting School at 
Tenafly, New Jersey, 
and comparing them 
with the tests that 
were conducted by this 
paper nearly forty years ago, one cannot 
fail to be impressed by the constant ten- 
dency both then and now towards the 
overloading of shotguns of all gauges. 
It is comparatively easy to understand 
how such extremes were reached and 
such abnormal loads developed in the 
good old days of black powder, for then 
everything was conducted on a rule of 
thumb basis and one man’s opinion was 
quite as good as another’s, for powders 
were not thoroughly standardized and 
the muzzle loading guns encouraged the 
greatest latitude of opinion and en- 
abled each man to experiment to his 
heart’s content, but today the possibili- 
ties of all of the better known powders 
are well understood and the boring of 
guns has been standardized to a remarka- 
ble degree and we have accurate instru- 
ments for determining the possibilities 
of various combinations of powder and 
shot. It, therefore, seems strange indeed 
that practical sportsmen who desire to 
improve their shooting in the field do 
not experiment with the various com- 
binations and determine accurately the 
load of powder and shot that is particu- 
larly adapted to their favorite gun and 
their own peculiarities. In fact, the pe- 
culiarities of the individual is the most 
important unit in the equation and it 
is the only one that has not in a way 
been standardized. Few men go to the 
trouble of determining just which load 
will suit them and their particular 
gun the best and a great majority of 
sportsmen accept blindly the opinions 
that were general among the sportsmen 
of half a century ago, namely: that the 
surest way to increase your efficiency in 
the field was to pour a few more shot 
into the barrel. 
It would be difficult to perpetrate a 
greater fallacy. There is a certain as- 
certainable balance between powder and 
shot gauges and game and distances. 
There is another quite as important 
ascertainable relationship between the 
size and strength and peculiar nervous 
organization of individuals and the 
weight and proportion of weapons and 
all of these things have to be properly 
worked out to develop the highest degree 
of efficiency, ease and general satisfac- 
tion in the field. By this we mean that 
the individual should have a gun whose 
weight is suitable to his strength and 
whose other proportions, as length of 
barrel, stock, drop, pitch, etc., are adapt- 
able to his physical peculiarities. Next 
there is a gauge that will develop its 
most effective pattern at the distances 
that particular game birds are shot 
at and a certain load of powder will de- 
velop in a certain weight of shot the 
highest velocity and penetration and the 
evenest, best distributed pattern. 
It is a fast, high velocity, evenly dis- 
tributed load of shot, developing its 
highest efficiency at assured game killing 
distances, and not a black smear of bad- 
ly distributed over-weighted load that 
gives to the prosecution of sport the 
keenest zest. Duck shooting at fifty 
yards and upland bird shooting at 
twenty-five yards are two distinct forms 
of sport. They cannot be satisfactorily 
approximated any more than can a man 
of medium size and strength stand up 
shot after shot under the heavy punish- 
ing load that is assimilated by some sea- 
soned veteran at the traps. 
There is no overlooking the fact that 
trapshooting in the days of live birds 
and at the present time of clay birds has 
had a very marked influence upon the 
building of guns, the developing of pow- 
ders and the loading of ammunition and 
while much of this influence has been for 
good, there is no denying that a good 
deal of it has been for harm; particu- 
larly does this apply to overloading and 
a good deal of sloppy sportsmanship, 
frequent misses, irregular form, wound- 
ed birds and slow second birds can be 
attributed to this error.” , 
T rapshooting and field shooting 
are two distinct types of gunnery 
and the net results and the conclu- 
sions of a demonstration at the traps 
cannot be applied literally and without 
modification to field shooting. The ex- 
perienced sportsman, the man who shoots 
afield as well as at the traps and ana- 
lyzes his work carefully, appreciates 
this situation thoroughly and usually 
adapts his load and his weapons to the 
varied conditions. Unfortunately, how- 
ever, there are many sportsmen who fail 
to do this. 
If we go back to the early days of 
pigeon shooting, we find it recorded that 
the overloading of weapons was carried 
to an extent that resolved many matches 
into mere tests of physical endurance. 
One of the best known of the old-time 
pigeon shooters was Capt. A. H. Bogar- 
dus, a world’s champion who defended his 
title both here and abroad. The Captain 
was a man of unusual physique and 
while the load in general use during this 
period was 1% ounces in pigeon matches 
where there was no limit, he was perfect- 
ly capable of standing up under a load 
of a couple of ounces of shot for bird 
after bird. 
Under the more or less fixed and arti- 
ficial conditions of trapshooting, there 
(continued on page 460) 
