Tim, To say that we are jealous of Terry's weather, is quite an understatement, but we are looking forward to dragging something out next week, snow or not. Our winter outings in the past included one very interesting experiment. We wanted to see what the spread would be at 200 yards on grapeshot from our 4" mortar, Model 1797. We went out to the prairie and found the slope that gradually rose as it went away from our mortar battery. We blocked the bed up with landscape timbers and a few sand bags at about 45 deg. We fired 7, one-pound lead bricks, surrounded with cut hardwood sticks, to keep the lead from jamming and let fly ahead of six ounces of 1Fg. They actually did better than we figured with a 75' lateral and 150' distribution in range. The impact hole for each brick was extremely well marked when it tore through the 2" of snow and threw a half bucket of dry, dusty soil out on the snow!
Chin up, Lance; things can only get better. Take a few pictures of your mid-winter shoot to show here. Have fun! We will be watching for those pics, KABAR2. Sounds like a good size to make.
Regards,
Tracy and Mike