By John M. Taylor
The golden age of shotgunning, from 1870 until the outbreak of World War I, was one of invention, innovation and evolution. During this time the breechloading double reached its final form, and repeaters—pumps such as Winchester’s 1893 and 1897, Marlin’s 1898 and Browning’s 1903 recoil-operated Automatic-5—were in sportsmen’s hands. What lagged behind was the ammunition.
At the beginning of this era, blackpowder was still in vogue and smokeless propellants were in their infancy, but gaining fast. The first smokeless powders were bulk powders—Schultze, E.C., Gold Dust Smokeless, American Wood Powder Co., King Smokeless, DuPont and others—that were loaded dram-for-dram just like blackpowder. The common dominator was the dram that allowed handloaders to use the same adjustable scoop to measure both blackpowder and bulk smokeless propellants. Dram measurement also indicated velocity, and dram equivalent remains with us today to indicate payloads.
In reality, little has changed in overall shotgun design since the beginning of the 20th century. However, features such as chokes and boring were overhauled as a direct result of magnum shotshell development. |
Blackpowder is the mixture of potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulfur with the burning rate governed by the size of the grains. The first smokeless powder was made by the German firm Schultze, which chemically treated wood particles and later, using an elaborate process, waterproofed the individual grains resulting in a reliable powder that, unlike blackpowder, was relatively unaffected by moisture.
Early shotshell cases were predominately metal—steel or brass. Metal shells lasted longer and, at one time, were easier to produce. In 1884, Winchester offered paper-hulled, 25⁄8-inch, 12-gauge shells at $11 per thousand, while brass shotshells loaded to the same specifications sold for $10 a thousand. Prior to the establishment of United Metallic Cartridge, Western, Peters and others, most shotshells were handloaded by small companies for larger firms such as Montgomery Ward in Chicago, which at one time sold more than 1 million handloaded shotshells a year.
Designed by Christopher Spencer, who also invented the Spencer Repeating Rifle, the Spencer shotgun was the first American-made, pump-action shotgun. It was available in 10 and 12 gauge, standard or takedown versions.
Paper shells with both high- and low-brass heads eventually won out over the metallics. The brass heads provided for positive extraction and reinforced the paper case. Low-brass cases had a high internal base wad to compensate for a smaller charge of fast-burning powder; high-brass loads used a low-base wad to allow for a stiffer powder charge, with the high-brass head reinforcing the cardboard hull. Promoters of old wives’ tales notwithstanding, the height of the brass head has nothing to do with the pressures generated by a particular load. Ill-informed individuals think old shotguns—those of cheap manufacture or of questionable repair and strength—can be safely fired with low-brass shells. This is absolutely not true. The pressure generated by many low-brass loads can equal the breech pressure of a heavy-field or magnum load.
The problem with these shotshells was poor downrange performance. Patterns are greatly affected by deformed pellets that never become part of the killing pattern. Harsh, explosive launching of the shot charge and roll-crimp shells that required an over-shot wad—folded or pie-crimps did not appear until just before World War II—also interfered with the shot column. Patterns thinned by deformed pellets flying out of the pattern before it got to the target and those with holes chopped in them by over-shot wads did not provide satisfactory long-range results. Then there was shot string.
When a shotgun is fired, the shot charge flies toward the target in a sausage-shaped cloud. Called shot string, at its worst it can stretch 10 or 15 feet. The benefit of shot string is that it provides for errors in leading a moving target. If the lead is a trifle much, there’s a chance that the end of the shot string will have enough pellets to bag the bird. However, what you gain in one part of a shotgun pattern, you lose in another. Ten- and 15-foot shot strings deliver only a few pellets throughout their length, often not enough to ensure a clean kill. Thus, short shot strings became a quest for the ammunition companies.
Beyond the paper-and-fiber wads lay one real problem—the powder. Blackpowder explodes or detonates, and so did bulk powders, albeit without the clouds of target-obscuring smoke. Both gave the shot charge a violent shove up the bore. What was needed was a more continual push that increased velocity as the shot charge traveled the bore.
John Olin, his brother Spencer and their father Franklin owned the Western Cartridge Company in East Alton, IL—now the Winchester Ammunition division of Olin Industries, which Franklin Olin referred to as, “…a couple of loading machines in a cornfield at East Alton.” The Olins were dedicated duck hunters, and they sought a better duck load. They reasoned that a progressively burning powder would more gradually raise the pressure then maintain it, giving the pellets a more gentle acceleration with higher and more consistent velocities. This new progressive-burning propellant combined with hard-lead pellets greatly lessened pellet deformation, improved patterns and shortened shot strings. Plating shot with copper, which began in 1926, prevented the fusing of pellets from hot propellant gases seeping past the early card-and-felt wads.
 Because the new, magnum-type shotshells produced pressures far exceeding those of past loads, the guns that held them had to change. Ansley Fox’s HE-Grade Super Fox (right) was made with heavier-walled barrels than its standard guns like the A-Grade (left). |
In 1921, as these new loads neared final development, John Olin sent eight boxes of them to Nash Buckingham, one of the leading hunting and shooting writers of the day, and acknowledged as the nation’s top long-range duck shot. Along with the shells, Olin sent his personal HE-Grade Super Fox, made by the Ansley H. Fox Company.
The Super Fox was the brainchild of gun writer Charles Askins Sr. from Boise, ID, an attorney named E.W. Sweeley and Philadelphia gunsmith Burt Becker whose forte was boring shotgun barrels. They spent a summer working with shotgun barrels, seeking the magic formula of delivering heavy charges of shot to tall ducks. The trio finally discovered a tightly tapered chamber with a long forcing cone that flowed into a .740-inch over-bored barrel terminating with a long taper into a tight choke gave the best patterns.
Scrollwork on L.C. Smith side-by-sides, like that found on shotguns from other manufacturers, grew fancier as the price tag increased. Most standard versions wore little engraving, but were the ones most often encountered.
Once the formula was discovered and refined, Fox built the HE-Grade Super Fox with very thick-walled barrels on a visibly larger and heavier action than its standard 12-gauge frame. Fox authority Michael McIntosh states that about 300 Super Foxes were made during the 20 years they were in inventory and cataloged. The majority of them were 12 gauge, some of which were chambered for 2 3⁄4-inch shells and the remainder for the 3-inch magnum. About 60 were built in 20 gauge using the same boring techniques but adapted to the narrower 20-gauge bore. Whether coincidental or planned, both Ansley Fox’s Super Fox side-by-side shotgun and Olin’s new Super-X ammunition hit the market in 1922.
Three-inch cartridges weren’t new in 1922. During the latter part of the 19th and early 20th centuries—provided enough shells were ordered and the load was relatively safe and possible to manufacture at a profit—ammunition companies would load anything anyone wished to order. Prior to World War I, the Widgeon Duck Club in central California obtained ten special-order, 3-inch-chambered 20-gauge Parker shotguns. They were probably used with ammunition from the California Powder Company of San Francisco. Heavy loads? No, the load information stamped on the over-shot wad on an early Peters Cartridge Co. 3-inch, 20-gauge shell shows it’s loaded with 2 1⁄2 drams of E.C. and 7⁄8 ounce of No. 4 chilled shot—the equivalent of today’s 20-gauge target load. Though the Super Fox wasn’t the only, or even the first, shotgun to have 3-inch chambers, using Olin’s new Western Super-X cartridges made it the best performer.
Fox was so confident of the Super Fox/Super-X combination that it guaranteed the Super Fox would deliver 80-percent patterns at 40 yards. What Fox failed to state was the guarantee only extended to customers who shot Super-X ammunition. When Fox began getting guns back with irate letters from customers regarding the apparent shortcomings of their barrels, Fox speedily stamped Super Fox barrel flats, “Barrels Not Guaranteed, See Tag.” The tag offered guidance as to what extent the barrels were guaranteed.
The 1920s roared, and although American gunmakers weren’t reaping huge profits, they were fiercely competitive. Shortly after the introduction of the Super Fox, L.C. Smith announced its Long Range or Wildfowl model. Heavier than the standard field-grade Smith, the Long Range had a reinforcing web between the barrels at the breech, and most were chambered for 3-inch shells, with very tightly choked 30- and 32-inch barrels.
The first 12-gauge Super-X 3-inch magnum propelled its 13⁄8-ounce shot charge at a muzzle velocity of 1,375 feet per second. As developed, the Super-X was a superior duck and goose load, but by 1958 the 12-gauge magnum became a slow, bloated load. The 3-inch 20 gauge was touted as the all-around shell, soon to replace all but the magnum 12s in hunters’ gun cabinets. When loading any cartridge there is a trade off: The heavier the shot charge, the slower the velocity. This was never truer than when the 3-inch, 12-gauge magnum moved from 13⁄8 ounces at a peppy 1,375 feet per second to 17⁄8 ounces at a slow 1,150 feet per second. The gain was a not-so-impressive 68 No. 4 pellets with greatly reduced retained energy, most of which would become deformed, inactive participants in a killing pattern.
Although Nash Buckingham wrote glowing words about his buddy Hal Howard’s Becker-bored, 3-inch, 20-gauge magnum, the 3-inch, 20-gauge guns that reached the masses, such as the Browning Auto-5, Winchester 21 and others, did not perform worth a hoot. With the exception of the 3-inch .410, there was probably no worse performing shotshell than the 3-inch 20, and we might as well throw in the 15⁄8- and 17⁄8-ounce 12-gauge, too. The downrange patterns from these loads had holes a freight car could pass through unscathed and shot strings as long as a Greyhound bus.
The best-balanced load is one with a shot-column height approximately the same as the width of its bore. A 12 gauge with a nominal bore of .725 inch does best with a
1-ounce shot charge and gives credence to the effectiveness of the .740-inch-bore Super Fox with the 13⁄8-ounce load. Too light for waterfowl, you say? Not so. Early in the golden age of waterfowl hunting, the typical 10-bore delivered 11⁄4-ounce shot charges. Olin’s progressive-burning powder took up less space than the blackpowder and bulk smokeless powders of those days, hence there was more room for shot, and the arms race was on. Once the square load is exceed, more pellets are subjected to damage from the back part of the shot column moving before the top portion of the heavy payload. Then there’s the problem of abrasion as the long shot column travels down the bore and, finally, compression through the choke. Yes, the 3-inch 12 and 20 gauges were supposed to be the do-all shotguns, but they were not.
Many of these evils had to do with lead shot, which was the only shot for centuries. With the advent of nontoxic steel shot in the 1980s, the magnums with their large-capacity cases came into their own. Steel pellets are 60-percent lighter than lead pellets, and the rough ballistic equivalent of lead could be achieved by selecting two steel-pellet sizes larger. If your favorite duck load was No. 4 lead, at the same muzzle velocity, a No. 2 steel pellet would deliver equivalent energy out to about 40 yards. Because larger pellets displace more room in a shotshell, large-capacity magnum cases were necessary to put enough shot in the pattern. The 3-inch 12 gauge and the all-but-moribund 10 gauge with its gargantuan, 31⁄2-inch case had plenty of new uses.
The 10 gauge suddenly became the choice of hunters shooting BB, BBB and T steel pellets at large Canada geese. The 3-inch, 12-gauge hull became the vehicle for
No. 2 steel shot for ducks. In 1988 waterfowlers were another choice—the 31⁄2-inch, 12 gauge. Guns for this super-long shell came from Mossberg and the ammo from Federal, and the combination provided the versatility of the 12 with the case capacity of the 10.
Although we tend to focus on the gun, the real driving force behind the evolution of our current-day shotguns has been the ammunition. Once established by 1903, shotguns, save the gas-operated semi-auto, have evolved little. Introduced in 1912, the hammerless Winchester Model 12 set the pump-gun’s style; screw-in chokes have made shotguns immensely versatile, but in retrospect, it has been the ammunition that has driven shotgun development. It was progressive-burning propellants; non-corrosive primers; hard, plated shot; plastic wads with shot-protecting cups; and finally steel shot that ultimately necessitated a complete overhaul of chokes and shotgun boring that have driven shotgun development.
The magnum has pretty much come full circle from a select shotgun, the Super Fox with its over-bored barrels and Super-X ammunition, that gave it an advantage over commonly configured 12s to today’s magnums that are specially intended for turkey and waterfowl. Modern magnums and today’s very fast heavy loads of steel shot and its alternatives are still putting ducks and geese in the bag.