10 Ga. B.P. Load

[Kevin Quinn]

Hello everyone, I just loaded my brass 2” 7/8 shot shells with 1 1/4 ounce # 7 bird shot and 3 drams of black powder. Is that a good load for shooting clay pigeons? I haven’t loaded black powder before, I wanted it to be a light load, I’m shooting a 10 ga Parker bros Damascus twist made around 1878. I used cardboard circle fly wads and got everything from track of wolf. Including the reloading book on shotshells. Just curious to get some more info thanks.

[Dave Noreen]

That is a very light powder charge. Here are the Union Metallic Cartridge Co. NEW CLUB 10-gauge loads from their 1903 catalog --

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[Kevin Quinn]

Ok thanks I appreciate the information!

[Mike Franzen]

If you have the Parker Pages archives, I wrote an article a few years ago about loading 10 gauge brass hulls.

[Jay Oliver]

That's a square load and I would certainly try it. If I were hunting I would go as high as 4 drams with 1 1/4 oz. depending on what I was going after.

For clay targets you should be fine. With repetitive shooting I like lighter loads shooting black powder(or I get a headache...). I just shot my 10 gauge lifter with 2 5/8" brass shells at the Southern and I didn't really have time to load new shells and used what I already had.

I was shooting my "light" 10s that are 2 3/4 drams and 1 1/8oz. of shot. I did much better than I would have thought and hit 21/25 at the heritage shoot. And was reminded how much fun it is to shoot black powder shells :)