USING THE PROGRAM

This section guides the user step-by-step through a worked example.

The Sample Task

A shoot extends over an open wetland area: over a season's mallard shooting, what is the typical 'take home bag' for a well-practised shotgunner using a gun with half choke? If the shooter simply changes from 32 gram (1^1/8 oz), 2.6mm diameter (number 6 size) lead shot cartridges to 'steel' shot cartridges containing the same total shot mass and pellet size, what will be the change in performance?

What other changes to the load and to the shooter's practices can be used to further influence the performance?

Loading the Relevant Datafiles

At the Welcome Screen (see Installing and Running the Program above), note that the instruction 'press spacebar to continue' is coloured bright blue. The bright blue highlighting is used throughout the program to indicate optional keypresses or datafields where names or numbers must be typed. So, press the spacebar: a selection of Quarry Types appears as follows.

The quarry descriptions are listed in alphabetical order on the left-hand side (for users who are familiar with computer textfiles, the corresponding names of the datafiles are shown to the right-hand side). The program can list up to 250 datafiles, however only six datafiles are supplied and these include three 'Standard Clay Pigeon' quarry types so that the program user could compare his/her Standard Clay Pigeon hit rate against that predicted by the program. In this worked example the quarry is Mallard, so press the (up) & (down) keys to move the bright yellow highlight so that Mallard is selected. Pressing the (enter) key will then accept that selection, and the data corresponding to the mallard will be loaded from its datafile.

A selection of Cartridges for which data is available is now displayed:

Use the & keys allow you to select the Lead shot, size No.6, and press the (enter) key to load the relevant data.

Now a selection of Shooter Accuracies is displayed:

The selection here is rather subjective: the sample task describes the shooter as 'a well-practised shotgunner'. It seems reasonable to describe the shooter in question as a 'very good shot', so use the & keys to select the line 'Accuracy versus bird: Very Good'. Press the (enter) key to accept the selection.

A selection of 'Ranging Policies' is now displayed:

In the worked example, the shoot is said to 'extend over an open wetland area': so few birds will appear at short ranges, and the open environment will allow clear shots at relatively long range (i.e. primarily 30m to 40m). Use the & keys to select 'Ranging Policy: Long' and press the (enter) key to accept.

The loading of datafiles is now complete and the screen showing the Current Data and Main Menu panels is displayed.