Mightly light 20 guage loads are a thing of the past!

I recently posted about 12 gauge loads.  This post concerns 20 gauge loads.

Modern factory shotgun loads are often labeled in “drams equivalent” or “dr. eq.”   A dram of black powder is 1/16 of an ounce.  Dram equivalent means the powder charge in the shell is supposed to produce the same shot velocity as the listed dram equivalent of black powder. So if the box is labeled 3 drams equivilent this means the velocity will be the same as a black powder shell containing 3 drams of powder.

For the past 15 years, I have been shooting, nearly exclusively, the Mighty-Lite target load from Estate Cartridge Company, which is the shell favored by Buz Fawcett in his Wingshooting Workshop.  Since graduating from the workshop, this has been the shell in my cartridge bags.  As luck would have it, Estate Cartridge was a small Texas specialty loader and they were sold to a larger competitor who abbreviated all of their lines.  My favorite shells are now a thing of the past, but I was not immediately affected, as we purchased these shells by the pallet, so I had plenty on hand for some time and had first bought them at $3.50 a box, and thought they were expensive when then had gone up to $5.  They were excellent for patterns, with high velocity, low deformity, and low recoil.

The Mighty-Lite in 20 gauge, was a 2 3/4″ shell, with 2 1/4 dr. eq., 3/4 oz. of shot in #8, at 1350 fps.   Not wanting to leave any stone unturned, I bought (in quantities) every 3/4 oz. shot shell I could find in 20 -gauge (and it turns out there are only a few):

Besides just the small amount of pellets (if you really want to see an increase in recoil, get more pellets than these very light loads), but the slight variation in dr. eq. has a lot more effect than I had thought.  The Winchester and Fiocchi have noticeably more kick in my traditional (and non-padded) side by side.  The Vinci shells were the only tolerable ones for 100+ rounds of sporting clays.  They have a very similar high velocity, as did the Mighty-Lites, with a good pattern.  I just wish they offered this 7/8 oz. load in the 2 1/2 dr. eq. of my old favorite #8’s.  The Winchester Super Targets are not bad shells, they are the same dr. eq., but much slower fps for some odd reason, but the price is significantly less than the Vinci and they are widely available.  Vinci is not and has to be special ordered from Able Ammo and comes with a high price tag.