Interesting patterns with a winchester model 12

[Bloody Marc]

Hey guys I recently acquired my dad's Winchester mod 12 and was attempting to pattern it for my first turkey season in 10 years. It's a model 1912 made in 1918 with a full choke 29 inch barrel in 12 gauge. Now I have read that the old full chokes are much tighter than the "full" choke of today. Reason being something to do with over powder card type wad/shell being a looser pattern than modern shot cups blablabla. Anyway, I shot half a dozen lead 1 1/2 oz #4 shot 1260fps loads through it 30 yards and the best I could do was 24 pellets in a 10 inch circle. The rest of the pattern was fairly dense and evenly spread outside the target ring. This didn't make any sense at the time so I tried the only other heavy shell I had for it just to see if it would be different. The second load was a lead 1 1/4 oz load of number 5s 1330fps. This produced a similar doughnut shaped pattern but with significantly more pellets in the 10 inch circle. 74 pellets was my best pattern out of 6 shots. So what I think is happening is my old full choke is too tight for these bigger shot sizes and is causing the shot to be over compressed creating the ultimate shotgunner's excuse. I did some very rough math and it made sense to me but I'm just a meatcutter and we don't do math much. With an average of 136 #4 pellets per oz the math adds up to 12% of the load made it into the 10 inch circle.
With 173 #5 pellets per oz the math says 34% of the load made it into the ring.
With #6 shot having 222 pellets per oz and the trend of 20% better payload distribution and taking into account that the #6 shot has about a 20% higher pellet count than the #5...... me thinks it will keel da bird much more better.
I couldn't find any heavy number 6 loads localy to test my theory so i had to order some yesterday. What do yall think? Am I off my rocker? Is there math, science, voodoo or witchcraft that I missed?

[ChesterCopperpot]

Buy some FoxTrot 2_3/4" and never look back.


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[lowoctane]

 
I am most interested in what yer old Mod 12 puts up with sixes! I inherited my father in law's 12 but it has a 690 sleeve in it's business end as it had the choke part blown off with a mud plugged end many years ago. It does pretty well with Nitro 4's but now the stock has broken at the receiver so it's sitting in my safe...

[ChesterCopperpot]

This is a 1927 Model 12 fixed full 20ga at 35 yds with FoxTrot Hot Rod #8.5s.



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[Bloody Marc]

Doesn't that tss score your barrel?

[crow]

No, not with the correct wads

[457121]

Personally I'd never shoot TSS out of vintage shotguns which were designed solely with lead shot in mind. Old shotguns barrels are much thinner than modern barrels made for use with steel shot.

[Izzyjoe]

Honestly I'd use the #6 shot and 35 yard maximum, but 74 pellets at 40yds will kill! Start with clean dry bore and retest those 6's again. There's been a lot of bird clobbered with that same setup.

[ChesterCopperpot]

Personally I'd never shoot TSS out of vintage shotguns which were designed solely with lead shot in mind. Old shotguns barrels are much thinner than modern barrels made for use with steel shot.

My best friend is a gunsmith of 45 years who primarily specializes in Model 12s. He probably owns 20 himself. He'll tell you flat out that it doesn't do a thing to the barrel. If you'd like me to message you a number to call and ask him I'd be happy to do that.


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[Bloody Marc]

I'm gonna stick with lead for this gun cause I don't want to risk damaging it. I'm also not willing to spend that much money on Shotgun shells. I figured 74 at 30 yards wasn't terrible but I feel like I can do a lot better than that. I guess we will find out as soon as Remington gets around to shipping me the #6 loads. Thanks for the responses guys! No disrespect as far as the tss is concerned. I'm sure you know what you're talking about but to use that in this gun to me kinda feels like putting a scope on a flintlock. Besides the fact that I cant shake the fear of damaging it. How many field grade guns have you seen with a special order barrel length and a stock from high figured wood? It was too special to somebody for me to want to risk it.

[lowoctane]

Amen...

[crow]

Are you sure it was a special order barrel and not just a barrel cut down from30 or 32"s, if you lost some or most of your choke that could explain some of your patterns.

[BandedSpur]

You could also try 7.5s. They have the horsepower to kill to 35 yards and are going to really fill in that 10" circle. I killed a bird a few years ago with my granddad's Iver Johnson (30" full) gun with a handload of 1.5 oz of hard 7.5s for nostalgia's sake. It did 116/10" @ 35 yds. Turned out to be not much of a challenge for the load as I killed the bird at 16 yds.

[Bloody Marc]

Crow, judging by how tight the bore is I would say it's choke is intact. I don't have any real way of knowing for sure though.
Bandedspur, the one and only turkey I have ever killed was with this gun and a number 8 trap load! Well it took me two shots cause that Jake was a lot further away than i could sneak!

[Ihuntoldschool]

Get you a good trap load with hard shot #7.5, 1 1/8 ounce and you'll be in good shape inside 40 yards.  Much cheaper and won't hurt your old barrel like the harder stuff will.