My Parker Research Letter is in; need translation

[Bill Murphy]

The target shot by Parker Brothers in that period was smaller than 30 inches as well as being shot at 45 yards, not 40. I just looked at an early stock book in TPS and there was a whole page of 175 patterns out of 12 gauge guns with 30" and 32" barrels, not likely open choked guns. One gun lists a second barrel with a 150 pattern. I can't remember what the pattern size is in these early stock books, but I think it was 20" or 25". A 20" or 25" pattern at 45 yards with a 175 count is probably full choke. The 150 pattern is probably a modified in the TPS illustration. The reason that Mark does not always have complete information on patterns for our letters is that the stock book copies were too wide to reproduce on Commander Gunther's copiers in two pieces. Normally, the right column or columns were sacrificed. These columns contained the pattern information in some eras. He did not have the option of cutting off the right (correction, left) columns because they contained the serial number. Often, the load used and the distance and diameter of the target is not specified. When the Research Committee was at Ilion in 1998, we copied very few stock book pages because Commander Gunther had already made copies and gifted those copies to PGCA.