Crushing It

Even at top gun clubs, the best shooters tend to stand out. Maybe they’re just a bit quicker to get on targets. Perhaps it’s the confidence they exude. Or possibly, they just appear more polished and seem to demand more from themselves.

It probably wouldn’t surprise anybody that those top-level shooters also want more from their shotshells. After all, in high-stakes competitions, when dropping one bird means finishing second, the last thing shooters can afford is ammo failure.

“Consistency is really what they’re looking for,” says Dan Compton, Federal shotshell product line manager. “If you’re a competitive shooter at a high level, you know exactly what you’re doing. As long as the ammo does what you want every time, that’s just one more thing you don’t have to worry about. Those folks are paying for confidence.”

And that’s what Federal’s High Over All competition shotshell aims to provide. Its combination of top components allows performance that’s unsurpassed in clay target matches.

Compton says High Over All shotshells feature high-antimony lead. Antimony is a semi-metallic chemical element that, when blended with lead, makes shot harder, so it resists deformation. At ignition, shotshell pellets are subjected to great force that can deform them and degrade patterns. A 5 percent antimony lead mix ensures pellets retain density and hardness.

“When the shell goes off, there’s a lot of pressure in the back end,” Compton says. “The high-antimony shot helps prevent that pressure from deforming the shot and minimizes the fliers in the pattern.”

Compton says High Over All 12-gauge shotshells also use a one-piece hull with a tapered design, which allows longer life and greater reloadability.

“We take one piece of plastic and form a shotshell tube with an integral base wad then put a brass head on it as opposed to taking a piece of plastic or paper and inserting a separate base wad at the bottom,” he says. “It just removes one more potential failure point if you’re trying to get the most reloads out of your shell.”

In addition, High Over All shells feature genuine brass heads, which provide significant advantages over brass-plated steel, including easier reloadability and allowing better extraction from the tight chambers of target guns.

“Brass is a little more forgiving, as it expands and contracts a bit,” Compton says. “That’s why it makes for good rifle cases. It gives you some forgiveness. It also makes it a little easier to resize when you’re putting through a resizing die.”

When designing High Over All, Federal’s engineers knew the wad would be critical. They developed a new design, the Podium wad, which has an extremely efficient crush-zone design that cushions the payload for less deformation, equalizes pressures for better pattern efficiency and reduces felt recoil for more comfortable shooting.

“You want a wad that’s going to give you good, controlled pattern,” Compton says. “With target loads, you want a consistent pattern, and then you use your tubes to adjust it. Our goal is to make the best, most consistent patterning wad, and we shoot for a 70 to 75 percent pattern at 40 yards with the full choke.”

Finally, Federal produces High Over All at a relatively slower rate than other target shotshells, meaning it receives more oversight and human interaction, further adding to the quality and consistency of the line. The result is a high-end shell even the best competitors can use with supreme confidence when the match is at stake.

“Anybody can go out and shoot trap at 16 yards with pretty much any load and it’s going to shoot fine,” Compton says. “When you get out to that 27-yard line or shoot in another really competitive setting, you probably want to pay more for a premium shell and looking for more out of it.”