The real reason targets break the way they do.

http://www.mn-trap.org/target_challenge_2012/target_breaks_final/TBR_final.htm

 

The use of the camera in these sequences skew the pictures, the only proper way to video is directly behind the gun, so you can see the shot cloud being delivered to the target.

The side view pictures are irrelevant as they show nothing important that we the viewer should see.

The shot cloud breaking the target, seen by an expierenced shooter can decipher the target breaks than what can be photographed. Camera positioning as I said earlier is the utmost importance.

The gun and choke performance is of utmost importance, the tighter the choke, the shell speed, faster target recognition, tells a better story.

No-one can accurately give the shot cloud position on any of these photos, there at best a guess.
This is an old article, been discussed to the no decision points.

One of N1H1 graphs will give as much of a guess.

This demo cannot give an accurate description.

Gary Bryant Dr.longshot

 

Thanks for being willing to play, Gary; I must say that I expected more participation, but that just may be because so few posters here shoot.

And I really did need a response, something for our videos to contrast with. Let's look at:

"The shot cloud breaking the target, seen by an expierenced shooter can decipher the target breaks..."

Give us specific examples, please, Gary.

1. What are specific characteristics of a break occasioned by the main body of the shot being to the left of target? And how do those characteristics differ from the case when the main body of shot is to the right of target?

2. What are specific characteristics of a break occasioned by the main body of shot being over the target? And how do those characteristics differ from the case when the main body of the shot is under the target?

As I say, Gary and others here, how is any of this deciphered? I see a break. How do I read the location of the main part of shot cloud based on that break? Again, specifically, since some general blah-blah will be of no use either to me as a shooter or to any of of us in seeing how this is supposed to work.

I'll even start your responses to cut down your typing. All any of you have to do is copy and paste the text I start with and just fill in the rest.

1 When the main body of the shot is over the target, the break will show where it was by ......

2. When the main body of the shot is under the target, the break will show where it was by ......

3. When the main body of the shot is to the right of the target, the break will show where it was by ......

4. When the main body of the shot is to the left of the target, the break will show where it was by ......

Can anyone help Gary and the rest of us with this?

N1H1

 

Thanks for being willing to play, Gary; I must say that I expected more participation, but that just may be because so few posters here shoot.

And I really did need a response, something for our videos to contrast with. Let's look at:

"The shot cloud breaking the target, seen by an expierenced shooter can decipher the target breaks..."

Give us specific examples, please, Gary.

1. What are specific characteristics of a break occasioned by the main body of the shot being to the left of target? And how do those characteristics differ from the case when the main body of shot is to the right of target?

2. What are specific characteristics of a break occasioned by the main body of shot being over the target? And how do those characteristics differ from the case when the main body of the shot is under the target?

As I say, Gary and others here, how is any of this deciphered? I see a break. How do I read the location of the main part of shot cloud based on that break? Again, specifically, since some general blah-blah will be of no use either to me as a shooter or to any of of us in seeing how this is supposed to work.

I'll even start your responses to cut down your typing. All any of you have to do is copy and paste the text I start with and just fill in the rest.

1 When the main body of the shot is over the target, the break will show where it was by ......

2. When the main body of the shot is under the target, the break will show where it was by ......

3. When the main body of the shot is to the right of the target, the break will show where it was by ......

4. When the main body of the shot is to the left of the target, the break will show where it was by ......

Can anyone help Gary and the rest of us with this?

N1H1

 

Thanks for being willing to play, Gary; I must say that I expected more participation, but that just may be because so few posters here shoot.

And I really did need a response, something for our videos to contrast with. Let's look at:

"The shot cloud breaking the target, seen by an expierenced shooter can decipher the target breaks..."

Give us specific examples, please, Gary.

1. What are specific characteristics of a break occasioned by the main body of the shot being to the left of target? And how do those characteristics differ from the case when the main body of shot is to the right of target?

2. What are specific characteristics of a break occasioned by the main body of shot being over the target? And how do those characteristics differ from the case when the main body of the shot is under the target?

As I say, Gary and others here, how is any of this deciphered? I see a break. How do I read the location of the main part of shot cloud based on that break? Again, specifically, since some general blah-blah will be of no use either to me as a shooter or to any of of us in seeing how this is supposed to work.

I'll even start your responses to cut down your typing. All any of you have to do is copy and paste the text I start with and just fill in the rest.

1 When the main body of the shot is over the target, the break will show where it was by ......

2. When the main body of the shot is under the target, the break will show where it was by ......

3. When the main body of the shot is to the right of the target, the break will show where it was by ......

4. When the main body of the shot is to the left of the target, the break will show where it was by ......

Can anyone help Gary and the rest of us with this?

N1H1

 

What unalloyed trolling. You opened the thread with literature worth reviewing, then threw everything away with this.

 

Well, it's been here for hours and all I hear from is Gary! Where are the rest of the shooter here? They must have an opinion. Finally a shooting post on as putative trapshooting site and all I get is virtual silence? Is it really true that none of you shoot? How about you, smoker? Does the post convince you that targets cannot be read for information about where the pellets that missed the target were? If not, how can a target possibly know anything about the pellets that missed it and so be able to break appropriately?

N1H1

 

What's that old saying? Silence is golden?

It is in this case anyway. Maybe these PUTATIVE shooters are afraid any answers to this BAITED post will only bring another of those insufferable charts or graphs.

I for one always enjoyed seeing them. Even on that old site that has become the "sparta only" channel. The site that has all those veteran shooters with all those years of experience. The site that has all those shooters that came up through the ranks. The site that has all those shooters that shot the tougher targets.The site that is the true Trapshooters site. The site that has the same 4 stooges thanking one another all day long.

When all the name calling and harassment of anyone that wasn't an ATA kool-aid drinker would start I could always count on seeing one of those charts or graphs showing up. To think that someone really spent that much time to come up with some of that BS always made me laugh.

We are all a little screwed up. That's just life. Nothing wrong with that, it's just they way it is. But reading those posts and seeing all those charts and graphs made me feel better. Just knowing that someone was so screwed up that they felt they had to post all that BS, and when you get right down to it that is all it is, BS, showed me that there actually was someone that was a whole lot more screwed up than I could ever be.

Now that's just me. Maybe some of the PUTATIVE shooters on this new great site just don't want to take the BAIT and take a chance of having to see another graph or chart.

Just a guess.

Flyersarebest

 

The only way to read the breaks is every shot a shooter makes must have a tight pattern to start with, and you the target reader must be right behind him/her to see his pattern and the break.

A more open choke will give every mis-leading break possible.

Been there done that.

I will not entertain any involvement in deciphering N1H1 results because of Camera Angles.

Gary Bryant Dr.longshot

 

My trap shooting philosophy is simple. Shoot to the left of the left's, the right of the rights, and at the straightaways. More times than not I can see the shot go. To me it looks like smoke, no clear definition but I can definitely see it. This has always been one of my secrets. Keep your eyes open after the shot, most shooters close them. Don't over think. Most long yardage shooters shoot under targets, even when they think they are over them.

Trap Shooting is more an art than a science. Like music it's all about timing. The best pigeon shooters I've known were drinkers and card players, gambling men. Not a ribbon shooter in the bunch. Rifle shooting is for scientists and perfectionists, charts have a place there. BD

 

So true. I played with that then put the fixed full barrel back on.

Dr., Do you think removable chokes are as good as the old fixed-choke barrels?

 

I guess I should be encouraged by the fact that no one wants to talk about TBR (target break reading) or describe how it was done. Maybe the videos Ron and I have posted over the years really have killed it off. But a couple of posts here point to some remaining misunderstandings about the videos themselves that I see I should clear up.

1. First, a correspondent was apparently misled by the "thinness" of the breaks into thinking that the guns used were not full chokes.

"The gun and choke performance is of utmost importance, the tighter the choke, the shell speed, faster target recognition, tells a better story."

"The only way to read the breaks is every shot a shooter makes must have a tight pattern to start with, and you the target reader must be right behind him/her to see his pattern and the break. A more open choke will give every mis-leading break possible."

Others have asked the same question, so in several of the videos we included centered hits to reassure them that what they were seeing was representative of what they would see on the trap field.

Here's one of those videos. See two things. (You should expand the videos to full-screen to get all the information.)

A. The choke obviously is full and most of the other videos show lesser hits because centered hits don't reveal anything about "strong" TBR.

B. The video pairs centered hits by the shot-cloud and the smoking breaks that such apparent centering should occasion. That shows that shot really is where the videos show it to be. This is an internal check on the "truth" of these videos. Over and over again we see that when the shot is way off to one side, the bird barely breaks. As the shot-cloud is more-and-more centered on the bird, the breaks get better and better, until when the shot is right on the bird, the break looks just as we expect it to, "smoke."

http://www.mn-trap.org/tech_corner/n_winston/images/4_July_centered.mp4

Did you notice that the shot was coming from above, rather than the conventional view you would see looking over the shooter's shoulder? The explanation is that these videos were in a chapter covering the cases when the shot is under the target and, while it's clear what's going on even when the camera is above the shooter, only when it is below can you be sure that every single pellet, even the most peripheral ones, really is below the target if it appears to be.

In practice the problem is non-existent. Here's Chapter 4 which starts with videos with the camera below the shooter and ends with it above and as you see, there is no problem identifying the position of the shot in either case.

http://www.mn-trap.org/tech_corner/n_winston/reading_target_breaks_chapter_4.html

I will clear up other misunderstanding as time permits.

Yours in Sport,

N1H1

 

A second misunderstanding about these videos is described by the following quote, posted above.

"The use of the camera in these sequences skew the pictures, the only proper way to video is directly behind the gun, so you can see the shot cloud being delivered to the target.
The side view pictures are irrelevant as they show nothing important that we the viewer should see."

In fact, the angle videos give us, if anything, a better understanding of how target break and the (non-) relation between where the main body of the shot-cloud was and the form of the break.

Here's the first:

http://www.mn-trap.org/target_chall...ks_final/target_break_movies/TBF_17_right.mp4

And here's the text I attached to it.

"Weren’t you struck by how similar the breaks were? The big pieces went overwhelmingly to the right and sometimes smaller ones flew there too, but the overall impression of sameness is what is most impressive. That’s because they are all just displaying limited random variations in the way they conform to a very powerful physical law, the Law of Inertia. That’s what you are watching, inertia as modulated by the weaker outside influences of air and pellets."

In this second video we see that the apparent location of the shot-cloud relative to the bird closely matches the "quality" of the break, again proving that we really are seeing where the shot was, where the bird was, and how the two are related. The number to the lower right of the frame is our judgement of where the shot was, vertically, relative to the bird. Minus 4 is way below; minus two is closer but still below; zero is right on the target; plus two is moderately above; plus four is way above.

http://www.mn-trap.org/target_chall...target_break_movies/TBF_rising_POA breaks.mp4

And here's my own description of what you have seen:

"1. The shot placements of -3, -2, and -1and +1. +2, and +3 results in breaks which generally look the same in form if not in intensity. The pieces follow the original trajectory of the target upward, generally, in accordance with the Law of Inertia we saw at work in the previous clip. Big pieces fly predominantly the right. When the pattern is not centered, you cannot tell by the break whetherthe shot-cloud is above or below the target.

2. Nothing about the “over” pellet-clouds signals “over.”In spite of half the shots passing above the birds in no case does there seem to be any reason for a target-break-reader to know that was happening. There are no pieces “driven down” or any other clue we can see.

3. Two of the “Zero” (centered) targets are broken very hard; two aren’t.

4. The third-to-last and second-to-last targets are broken “with authority” as Don Zutz used to write, in spite of the fact that they are just a pellet or two away from being missed altogether.

5. You may want to reexamineyour views on “Weak TBR” when you see that breaks when the shot-cloud is near the target differed little from the breaks when the shot-cloud is much farther away. There is no reliable degradation in the “quality” of the break as the pattern moves, stepwise, closer to or farther from the target; sometimes the break gets better as the target moves more toward the center of the pattern, sometimes it gets worse.

Can anyone seriouly doubt that what you see that looks like shot in not really shot, or what looks like a target is not where it appears to be? Is there any other reasonable explanation?

Yours in Sport,

N1H1

 

I

It depends the Gun Mfgr, I have proven the Caesar Guerini Full Chokes are the best that I have tested, giving me a 19"patterns at 35yards, That's damn tight, N1H1 called me a liar on the other site even after I posted a Picture Diameter circle on that site.

I believe it is the taper in the CG Barrell down to the choke entry that gives the superior Patterns. Also the Kick's Smoke Extra Full Choke tubes, .690 Diameter, but I have a problem using the Ported Extended Choke tube sending debris on shooter next to me in buddy shoots
This happened Thursday Night, so I am exchanging it for a Non-ported style.. Am putting a call to Kick's Monday.

I the better chokes are the long tubes 3" inches long w/some parallel, as this parallel gives a better pattern.

Kick's also mfgrs the Comp-n-Choke if memory serves me right.

Just because a choke tube is expensive does not make it better.

Browning came out with Longer Choke tubes several years ago, doing away with the short
Winchoke Style. Call them the Invector plus. But there are mistakes in Maching Tubes and some being mis-marked, some bored off center, so pattern your tubes, I had a Briley tube I bought for my Perazzi, that had this problem, Briley replaced it, and said it should have never left their plant. Briley replaced it at the Shoot in San Antonio several years ago.

I will not say one choke tube is better than others, as I have not tested them all. Bbl machining, and choke tube design is important to Patterns.

I firmly believe the .740 bore is the Ultimate 12 ga Trapshooting Bore. My personal experience on the .750 bore in cold weather gives off sounding/poor wad sealing, so I traded that gun off.

Sorry about my rambling on.

Gary Bryant Dr.longshot

 

Poor Shooter Pointability, Poor Target acquisition, too many shooter variables. Target distances where broken, cannot be repeated time and time again exactly.

Comparing #8s vs #7.5s makes a tremendous difference.

Graphs and Pictures cannot show this!!

Gary Bryant Dr.longshot

 

I've never believed a (really good shot) shooter reads the piece broken from a clay as an absolute indicator of where the shot charge went. He just knows he almost shot in front or behind that target!! The experienced shooters will read their last look (they had at that target) when the gun fires. Read Brads description above? He isn't alone in reading his last look at the target when he hammers it, or, chips one either!

The only way possible for others to read the clay and the shot charge proximity is actually having the ability of seeing both together at the same time. Brad sees a smoky looking cloud, some claim a swarm of bees is the look. Without the ability to see that, any other answer is nothing but guesswork.

HAP

 

From the Doctor:

"Poor Shooter Pointability, Poor Target acquisition, too many shooter variables. Target distances where broken, cannot be repeated time and time again exactly."

Gary, you must not be understanding what you are looking at. The videos are just of the shot and the bird. Yes, most shots are "poorly" aimed, but that's intentional. Centered hits provide no information other than the fact that the shot was centered and I posted a video of what happens then. The bird is smoked, since all the guns used have full chokes.

The relationship of the bird and the shot and the resulting break are not related to the shooter at all. Neither the bird not the shot has, after all, any understanding of who or what made the shot go where it did nor at what distance from the shooter they came together. That's why these videos can't be argued with; everything but the shot/bird/break has been stripped away. There are no other variables. All you see is where the shot was relative to the target and what happened when they interacted.

I am surprised, however, that in the day-plus our piece "Why targets break the way they do," has been available here, it has not attracted any substantive comment. No TBR (target break reader) has told us why what is shown is not true or in what respects the long verbal analysis we provided is in error. Or even how TBR is supposed to work. Or has answered any of the questions I posed earlier:

1. What are specific characteristics of a break occasioned by the main body of the shot being to the left of target? And how do those characteristics differ from the case when the main body of shot is to the right of target?

2. What are specific characteristics of a break occasioned by the main body of shot being over the target? And how do those characteristics differ from the case when the main body of the shot is under the target?

Once we get to that, we will have something to work with.

There have been some valuable posts, nevertheless. Hap has, in my opinion, perfectly described what the best shooters really do, but it has nothing to do with TBR. It is simply paying attention and correcting - in the middle of an event - recognized weaknesses in aiming. Closely aligned to this is the oft-promoted idea that TBR is useful for "confirmation." The idea is that if the good shooter gets the impression that, for example, he or she was a bit higher than intended, the form of the break should be analyzed to confirm this.

This is more likely to cause trouble than help. Humans, after all, are programmed to seek "confirmatory" data. So if the gun looks too high, the piece that was ejected down and the shooter visually locks onto is considered"confirmation" of the "too high" theory.

But the certain fact is that it is "confirmation" only in the mind of the shooter.

We made a video of the effectiveness of low-recoil shells found they work fine if you are reasonably centered, but if you just get a single pellet on a bird, which will almost always lead to a break with "lights," with low recoil you will get a lot of lost targets, again, if you are so far off that you only hit the target with single pellet.

To get examples of those single-pellet hits, I shot well above the bird on every shot. But, as you see, there was no evidence from the breaks that the shot was over the bird. Pieces were not noticeably "driven down" or any of that guff. These shells, slow as they were and delivering their shot well high, just produced breaks which were like any others, high, low, left, right, caused by fast or slow shot. That's because TBR doesn't work at all; targets break because of inertia, linear and rotational, and the effect of air on bits flying though it. Not where the pellets that missed were. Here's the video:

http://www.mn-trap.org/tech_corner/n_winston/no_dome_breaks.html

I certainly hope that a live, articulate TBR will show up here to plead his or her case. We haven't gotten anywhere so far except for Hap's post.

Yours in Sport,

N1H1

 

I can only speak for myself, of course, but I stopped shortly after learning I wasn't looking at the break from the shooter's position. So, no look, no comment.

 

Well, Twoboxer, in almost all the videos you were looking at the break from the shooter's position. In fact, there was only one I can recall which wasnot, the angle one, but there the shot's position is clear enough. If you don't want to see the whole thing again, just try this. clearly taken from the shooter's position.

http://www.mn-trap.org/tech_corner/n_winston/no_dome_breaks.html

What do you make of the fact that every one of shots was over to far-over the target and the breaks gave no evidence of this? Are you a TBR? If so, maybe you will answer these simple questions:

1. What are specific characteristics of a break occasioned by the main body of the shot being to the left of target? And how do those characteristics differ from the case when the main body of shot is to the right of target?

2. What are specific characteristics of a break occasioned by the main body of shot being over the target? And how do those characteristics differ from the case when the main body of the shot is under the target?

N1H1