Hull Ultimate Twenty Cartridge

My son uses Hull Pro Twenty’s in his Browning 325 for clays and I have found them a superb performing cartridge. Ideal not only for clays but for all sorts of vermin control too.

Ultimate cartridge

Hulls Ultimate Twenty cartridge, however, is firmly aimed at the game or vermin shooter. This 20-gauge offering is designed to perform at the limit of the calibre but doing so safely. It aims to combine both a dense pattern along with retained energy for humane kills, yet still be a smooth shooting cartridge in the aim and shoulder. They are ideal for those tricky high birds or fast game at longer ranges, the Ultimate Twenty’s reaching that bit further with lethality. Just Cartridges sell them for £343 per 1000.

Spec

The cartridges show a 70mm long, yellow plastic case and are only available with a fibre wad and 28- gram loading option. There is a choice of shot sizes, either #5.5 or #4.5.

The #5.5 or 2.75mm diameter pellet is a great down range performer. It provides a good density for retained energy and the size means the cartridge has a payload consisting of a total of 241 pellets for the 28-gram load weight. So choosing the choke of your shotgun wisely will give the Ultimate Twenty a keen advantage.

The 10mm brass head allows easy ejection, even from a hot chamber, and the fibre wad provides a good seal for the powder combustion gases down the barrel. Hull also ensure the actual shot pellets are hardened and truly spherical which stops pellets clumping together and spoiling the pattern down range plus also achieves good velocities from a fibre wadded cartridge.

The load has been formulated to provide a smoother, yet fast velocity, meaning that recoil is more manageable for sustained bouts of birds or for smaller/ younger shooters. Velocities are stated at 1450 fps at the muzzle, with over 630 fps remaining at 50 yards so plenty of knockdown power from the combined pellet count in the pattern to achieve humane kills.

Field results

We used a Beretta Silver Pigeon to shoot the pattern boards at 30 yards with the 3/4 choke fitted. The aim being to see how a slightly tighter choke, that you might use for longer or higher shots, would perform. I have to say the combination of 28-grams of #5.5 shot at a stout velocity was no problem at all, even with the odd wrongly placed cheekbone on the stock.

All Hull cartridges are very well made and appointed i.e. the cases are straight, they produce consistent velocities and the star crimp closure is always very uniform. This attention to detail showed as we had a total of 212 #5.5 pellets hit the pattern board, which is superb. A truly dense pattern evenly spread with no holes for game to get through. In fact, the four dissecting quadrants of the inner 15” nearly had an even pellet count in each, they were 26/29 (top) and 21/20 (bottom) making a total of 96 hits, which is excellent. A great number of these were very near the centre so at further range as the pattern widens you would still have a very good number of inner pellet strikes just where you need them.

The remaining 116 pellets spread evenly around the outer 30” circle to help with hits from a misjudged speed of a flying bird. That’s great performance and so I would say at further ranges especially with such a dense pattern and greater energy from the #5.5 shot, that the Ultimate Twenty will perform as stated.

Conclusions

I like the combination of the larger #5.5 shot instead of #6’s, yet still keeping the overall load weight down to 28-grams. It still provides superior patterns and is easy on the shoulder, that’s got to be worth the money.

Contacts

Hull Cartridge www.hullcartridge.co.uk
Just Cartridges www.justcartridges.com