[fabsroman]

Dom,

When I first got on this board eons ago, we had a pretty good discussion about shot strings and measuring them.

Yes, steel gives a shorter shot string because none of the pellets deform (i.e., not many come out of the pattern).

One way to measure a string is to shoot at a huge circle that is rotating. You can shoot at one spot and see how far the circle makes it around. If you know the circles RPM and the shots velocity, you would be able to figure out how long the shot string is and you would also be able to see the holes in the pattern.

Whether or not a bird going directly away takes more concentration than a bird flying through the shot string, I highly doubt it. A bird flying straight away will have every pellet in the pattern coming at it, whereas the bird flying through the pattern will only have a couple of pellets coming at it. Just imagine a shot string being a freight train and the bird being a car. Granted, the freight train is completely solid and there is no way a car can get through it, but the point is that the car will only hit one little portion of the freight train as it collides with it.

If your pattern is tight enough, you should be able to smoke all of those going away birds. The ones that give me trouble are the ones that look like they are going away, but they are angling slightly.