Sizzling skeet shells

Charlie Bull of Just Cartridges lists ammo that will do the job with performance to spare

I enjoy Skeet because I think it sharpens you up, providing targets at all angles. Station 8, where it appears, is a proper sharpener! I am not interested in grinding out 100-straights because my attention span is woefully short, so I can’t concentrate hard enough to actually achieve it, but it is a lot of fun and generally good practice for a variety of other shooting scenarios.

With that in mind, don’t forget that a Skeet shell with about a million pellets in it is absolutely ideal for those closer-in targets encountered at Sporting or Fitasc.

The different Skeet disciplines mean that there is a mind boggling array of cartridges. This list will give you a taste throughout the spectrum.

English Skeet is the most popular of the skeet disciplines, and 28gm 9 shot is the usual choice for the Skeet shooter. American Skeet (NSSA) uses different bore sizes with little choice. 

Olympic Skeet is the zenith of the sport. Being faster, shot gun-down and with a variable delay on release, this a tricky but exciting variation on the sport. The main difference from the cartridge point of view is that Olympic Skeet must be shot with a maximum 24gm load, and cartridges tend to be higher performance than other standard Skeet alternatives.

A lot of Skeet shooters will actually use a larger shot size for the second bird on Station 4. I am not entirely convinced you need it, but the choice is yours. So let’s have a look at what we’ve got this month.

Gamebore Super Steel

Load: 24 & 28gm Plastic 9 shot
Case Length: 70mm
Muzzle Velocity: 1350 fps
Price: £161 / 1,000 24gm; £179 28gm

Just because it’s cheap doesn’t mean it’s inferior, and a lot of our customers use these steel loads competitively. Steel gives you about 20% more pellets, and the patterns are better than with lead shot.

Gamebore’s sister loads in Pro Steel give a little more high performance at not much more money, so what’s not to love?

RC2 Competition

Load: 24 & 28gm Plastic 9½ shot
Case Length: 70mm
Muzzle Velocity: 1410 fps
Price: £204 / 1,000 24gm; £209 28gm

This one is my personal favourite for three very good reasons: plenty of performance; super soft recoil; and very reasonably priced. RC2s have been around for yonks and are still one of the most popular, probably for the above reasons. What more can I say? If you haven’t tried them, you really should.

RC4 Excellence

Load: 24 & 28gm Plastic 9½ shot
Case Length: 70mm
Muzzle Velocity: 1450 fps
Price: £259 / 1,000 24gm; £273 28gm

The RC2’s big sister, and what you get is blistering performance and a history of winning international competitions. The 24gm is universally used for Olympic skeet and has probably won more internationals than all the rest put together. The RC4 is of the highest quality, and quite frankly sells itself on these credentials.

Fiocchi TT2 Skeet

Load: 24gm Plastic 9½ shot
Case Length: 70mm
Muzzle Velocity: 1425 fps
Price: £203 / 1,000

Fiocchi have a reputation, like RC, for producing exemplary clay shells, and this is no exception. There are other Skeet cartridges in the Fiocchi range, but this is the specialist one for Olympic disciplines. It has low felt recoil and exceptional patterns, making it ideal for all things Skeet as well as being very competitively priced.

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