The STRING thing

Everyone knows – for plenty of discussion takes place around the shoot lunch table, let alone in magazines – that shot extends into a column after it leaves the muzzle. The length of the string is naturally determined by load, barrel length and choke, but all shots taken have strings attached, so to speak. Sundry tests have proved that pellets arrive on target in a succession, the leading pellets having greater velocity and striking the central area while the slower pellets progress to the outer edges of the pattern.

The niceties have demanded investigation on both sides of the Atlantic for more than two centuries. The earliest recorded research took place in 1801, when a Frenchman named Gorbert used a rapidly revolving paper disk to measure stringing. In the 1870s a certain Captain William deV Foulke paid American railmen to allow him to attach