The Short Ten - How many shooting one?

[Tom Flanigan]

That's a beautiful gun. The ten's pattern 1 1/4 oz. of shot better than the twelve, obviously. My ten's don't pattern at 90+ percent but they do throw beautiful tight patterns with a 1 1/4 oz. load of fours. They also throw decent patterns with #2 shot. I don't load under 1 1/4 oz. simply since I only use the 10 for hunting. I wish I had a ten back in the days when I used buckshot for swamp whitetails. I could get decent patterns from my 12 bores by using #1 buck and melting wax around the pellets four to a layer. But the wax created an interesting situation. The shells were only good for about a week. After that, the wax would hold the shot together and the buckshot would shoot like a slug without the accuracy. I found that very strange. I wouldn't have believe it if I didn't experience it. Having seen that, I only loaded enough shells for a week of hunting. I would shoot the last weeks shells to make sure I didn't use the older shells by mistake.