Shotgun pellet that is elongated, achieves stable flight after disordered launching, and is easy of manufacture

Abstract

A shotgun pellet that flies faster and farther for a given pellet weight than spherical pellets or other shapes by means of streamlined aerodynamic design, having no features that fail to transit the barrel without damage, orienting itself nose-into-the-wind despite disordered launching, spins about its axis, minimizes or eliminates nutation, and is manufactureable in a coaxial two-element die and punch cold-forming machine.

I claim: 
     
         1 . A non-spherical shotgun pellet that is elongated and axisymmetric, consisting of nose and tail sections, the nose being shorter than and of greater maximum diameter than the tail, center of gravity being on pellet axis at or near the nose-tail interface, the rear-most section of the nose being cylindrical, all pellet cross-sections being circular except for small cut-outs in the nose where recessed cut-outs occur for rotational purpose, all pellet diameters of the nose and tail are either constant or diminishing with distance from the nose-tail interface, lateral aerodynamic drag of the tail being sufficiently greater than lateral aerodynamic drag of the nose to create a net moment about the center of gravity that rotates the pellet nose-first into the wind when pellet is launched in a different attitude and maintains nose-first attitude throughout flight. 
     
     
         2 . The pellet of  claim 1  with a cylindrical section at the tip of the tail which is of a length at least equal to the radius of that cylindrical section, with no protuberance, such as, without limitation, a fin-like protuberance. 
     
     
         3 . The pellet of  claim 1  whose nose forward of said cylindrical section is, without limitation, hemispherical, or hemiellipsoidal, or conical with rounded corners, or combinations or variations of said geometries, each being or nearly being tangent to said aft cylindrical portion of pellet nose. 
     
     
         4 . The pellet of  claim 1  with at least two recesses in the nose, each recess consisting of two planar surfaces at right angles to one another, one plane being parallel to pellet axis and the other plane being at an angle to pellet axis such that air impinges it when pellet is nose-first into the wind. 
     
     
         5 . The pellet of  claim 1  with the recesses of  claim 4  being faired smoothly to adjoining surfaces. 
     
     
         6 . The pellet of  claim 1  with the planes of  claim 4  being at other than right angles to one another. 
     
     
         7 . The pellet of  claim 1  with the planes of  claim 4  being nonplanar. 
     
     
         8 . The pellet of  claim 1  with aft end of nose being an annulus that is perpendicular to pellet axis with an outer radius that is the same as the radius of said cylindrical aft end of pellet nose, and an inner radius that is the length of the radius of the tail where it joins the nose. 
     
     
         9 . The pellet of  claim 1  with annular ring of  claim 6  being nonplanar. 
     
     
         10 . The pellet of  claim 1  with tip of tail chamfered in the manner of a traditional boattail. 
     
     
         11 . The pellet of  claim 1  with a tail that terminates with the cylindrical section of  claim 2  and includes the boattail of  claim 10 . 
     
     
         12 . The pellet of  claim 1  which is of minutely variable length due to variations in the length of said cylindrical section at the aft end of pellet nose caused by imperfect consistency of size of blanks that are fed into the manufacturing device.