A question floating around in may otherwise empty head.
At what point (of speed) does a regular diabolo pellet buck the wind better than a Slug?.
I shall try and explain my question
we know because the BC of a slug is better the slug is better in the wind , but if your gun shoots your favorite pellet at say 950fps but slugs of the same weight shoot out of it at , say 850fps , would the pellet at 950fps buck the wind better.
Looks like CenterCut got in there with a pretty good answer before I got this written. I'll just leave this anyway. He provided good links, too.
Well you know that the BC of a given projectile changes with velocity, temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure. Even so you can ignore that for the purposes of this discussion and just assume all things are held constant and only two projectiles are being considered.
First we can not assume that the BC of a slug is better than that of a pellet "in the wind". What you are talking about there is wind drift rather than BC. Wind drift is principally a function of time of flight and the density of the projectile. A heavy (dense) projectile (lead) which has the same time of flight as a light (less dense) projectile (a feather) having the same cross section presented to the wind will be moved less by the wind. Wind drift then is
mostly about how long it takes the projectile to get to the target because most projectiles are fairly heavy and dense.
That brings us to the suggestion that a slug will necessarily be launched at a lower velocity than a pellet. This is true only if the slug has a larger surface area in contact with the barrel and/or weighs more than the pellet. It is likely that a slug with more surface area in contact with the bore and which is heavier than the pellet will be launched with a higher muzzle energy than the pellet given the same "push"
to a point. Eventually the system will be overwhelmed by the weight and/or barrel friction of the slug and you will get lower muzzle energies. This can happen quicker than you expect because energy is a function of the square of the muzzle velocity.
ASIDE: Does the above suggest that slugs with "grease groves" may be more efficient in air rifle barrels? There is a good question.
Now to answer your question. A pellet never has a better BC than a spitzer shaped slug. Almost always the projectile which has the longest time of flight to the target will be the one most displaced by wind drift. You may actually even see some comparisons where a slug has more wind drift than a pellet at close ranges and less wind drift than the pellet at longer ranges simply because the muzzle velocity of the slug is slow enough (relative to the pellet) for the pellet to have a lower time of flight at the close ranges.
So the take away from this is pellets are usually a better choice for shorter ranges and slugs are usually a better choice for extended ranges. There will be some middle ranges where either will be a good choice.
I think of it like this. Pellets are usually preferable where you want to limit your range for safety reasons. For example, shooting slugs in town is probably a bad idea most of the time, as would be really heavy pellets with high BCs. Slugs are usually preferable where you want to extend your range to longer targets or to deliver more energy on larger game.
Hope that helps.
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