Take it to the plate

Are you using the best cartridge for your gun? If you’ve ever wondered, Simon O’Leary’s beginner’s guide to using the pattern plate is for you!

- SIMON O'LEARY

If at all possible, pre-mounting will give the best results at the pattern plate

Have you ever considered patterning your gun? Some shooters will have done this many times, but most don’t – and many will have no understanding of what I’m talking about! Patterning your gun is actually a very interesting exercise, and, dare I say, an enjoyable process, that entertained correctly will give incredibly useful data relating to your gun and cartridges.

To pattern your gun is merely to fire your gun at a large metal plate. Then, the behaviour of the shot or ‘pellets’ can be visually examined, due to their indentation on the plate’s surface. The plate itself usually comes in the guise of a large sheet of metal, fixed to two large timber or metal posts, something resembling that of a large roadside sign, albeit without wording!

The more traditional set-up will have a large trough at the base, an old livestock water feeder for example. This would be filled with a white liquid, say water mixed with powdered chalk or hydrated lime. A mop is used to whitewash the plate prior to every take, thus creating a blank surface for each individual shot. The modern arrangement is to clip large sheets of plain paper to the plate. The latter allows the shooter to collect and collate patterns for future reference.

Most cartridge brands produce their own pattern cards, including a blank data box, on which the user can record cartridge brand, size, choke size, distance and so on. This is invaluable when patterning different brands with matching size and weight for comparison.