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‘97 vs. Side-by-Side, Which is faster, When?

Madd Mike approached me about addressing a letter to his club.  It seems that some have been complaining that for even numbered strings of shots, the SxS is faster, and for odd numbered strings of shots, the '97 is faster. The club is considering going so far as to split the stages with half having an odd number of targets and half having an even number of targets. It seems there is a difference in the perception of which is faster, vs. looking at the actual times. Intuition tells me that even numbers of targets are where it’s at.  So let’s look at some numbers.

I’m relatively equal in skill between the two guns and dug back through my practice notes to find some runs that we could use for comparison.  I picked out 3 runs for each gun.  These were neither my fastest runs, nor my slowest runs.  These are average runs. These are runs for 6 shots.  I practice the shotgun from the same starting position. With the gun flat on table, hands not touching gun or shells. The SxS times can be broken into pairs, but the ‘97 times can’t.  I was pulling 3 at a time and loading over the top.  The only way to accurately compare these runs is at the 6 shot split.  However, because I recorded the splits, times 4 shot strings can be reasonably extrapolated.  For 2 shot strings, I have another ’97 technique that I use, numbers are in the chart below. I don’t use it for 4 or 6 shots as I seem to have a higher fumble factor.

First, here’s the data (6 shot ’97 runs):

Analysis:
First glance tells us that times at the 6 shot mark are close enough to be practically the same for both types of guns. No advantage to either.  This is an even number of shots.

What about at the odd numbers?  Let’s look at a 3 shot string. 

With a SxS, that comes to average splits of 1.79 for the first shot, 0.31 for the second shot, and 2.31 for the third shot.  That’s a total of: 4.41 seconds for 3 shots.  Adding in a 4th shot adds just 0.3 of a second.

With a ‘97, the average 1st shot is 1.86, 2nd shot is 0.96, 3rd shot is 0.81. That’s a total of 3.63.

The difference is a 0.78 second advantage to the ‘97.

Let’s break this down even farther.  How about just the first 2 shots?

With a SxS, the first 2 shots average at 1.79 and 0.31 for a total of 2.1 seconds.

For the ’97, we can’t use the data above.  Because I was pulling three shells, the pickup time is longer than for 2, and the split in between is longer due to the extra shell in hand.  I have to go back to my practice notes for different data for 2 shot runs.  First shot is more typically at 1.5 seconds, and the split is 0.6 seconds (again, these are average times pulled from my practice notes), for a total of 2.1 seconds.

This renders the 2 guns relatively even for 2 shots.

How about at 4 shots?

Easy to do with the SxS splits, we’ll just average the first 4 shots: 1.79, 0.31, 2.31, 0.34. The total is 4.75 seconds.

The ‘97 is a little more problematic.  I usually pull 4 with the ‘97 (although looking at the times above, I should switch to the pull 2) and looking back over my splits (you’re going to have to take my word for it), a good representation is: 2.01, 1.01, 0.96, 0.81 for a total of 4.79 seconds.

The difference between the two here is virtually indistinguishable.

Conclusion:
Here’s how I see all this data pan out. At 2 shots, advantage SxS.  At 3 shots, advantage ’97. From 4 shots on, in even numbers of shots, both the ’97 and SxS are on equal footing. 

Knock down targets, advantage ’97.  Where does this come from?  Knock down targets are generally of the “must fall” variety.  That means the shooter engages them until they are down.  If the SxS shooter misses a shot, they have to go back to the belt.  That’s over 2 seconds.  If a ’97 shooter misses and has to go back to the belt, it’s a much quicker grab, for me, around 1.4 seconds.  That’s more than a 0.6 second advantage to the ’97 shooter.

Keep in mind that these are my numbers.  I’m pretty well practiced.  For the average shooter, the times will be larger and the differences greater.

If a match director is really interested in building a fair match, for the shotguns anyway, keep the target numbers even and in banks of even numbers of targets.

I Missed Something:
I forgot to address something.  I’ve seen a number of stages with 6 shotgun targets.  This should be equitable, right?  Unfortunately, they were set up in 2 banks of 3 with movement in between.  This scenario is a big advantage to the ’97 shooter as it’s really 2 sets of 3 targets.  If you remember the difference from above of 0.78 seconds, double it.  Setting targets up like this is more than a 1.5 second advantage to the ’97 shooter. 

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