LYALVALE EXPRESS ENGLISH SPORTER CARTRIDGES

With so many options for a good clay load on the market these days, it seems interesting that the industry standard 1oz loading of No.7.5 shot can have so many variations and new features.
Well, Lyalvale Express is not a company to sit on its laurels, with its Express Excel load being the only British-produced shotgun cartridge to have won an Olympic gold medal, and these English Sporter 12-bore loads are just the ticket for practice to help you reach that standard.
Established in 1983, Lyalvale manufactures shotgun cartridges for both game and clay, and its team members are all keen shooters, passionate about the sport. A combination of the best components from all over the world, plus Lyalvale’s rigorous testing processes, ultimately delivers a perfectly engineered cartridge that you can trust to give unrivalled performance with every shot. All cartridges undergo rigorous testing to guarantee consistent ballistics and patterns across each individual range, ensuring the same high levels of power and precision every time you pull the trigger.
The English Sporter is a competitively priced, highly consistent cartridge that delivers good quality in a general, all-round cartridge specifically engineered with the club shooter in mind. It’s Lyalvale’s best low-recoil, great-value clay cartridge, and the typical price is £297 per 1,000.

Case, powder, wad, and pellets
The English Sporter is designed as an economical load for clubs, offering high-volume shooting sessions at minimal cost without compromising performance. In other words, the wallet won’t feel it, but the clay will!
You have a fairly standard 12-bore cartridge with a generic all-red 70mm (2¾”) case featuring black lettering to indicate the contents. At the base is a 10mm brass head that is precision-made with tempered brass caps to ensure perfect ejection every time. The six-star crimp is very uniform, as one would expect from Express, and the whole cartridge is very concentric in its form.
Inside is 28g of No.7.5 shot and either a plastic or fibre wad. We had the fibre-wadded load on test. The wadding includes a card-type divider between the powder and the main wad column, ensuring even pressure for consistent ignition. The one-piece 9.45mm wad tightly fits the bore and cushions the pellets as they make their way down the barrel and through the choke. This fibre wad arrangement ensures an efficient burn and consistent shot patterns.
You don’t have to stick to the No.7.5 shot size if you don’t want to, as No.8 and No.9 sizes are also available, making this cartridge very useful for all forms of clay competitions and, dare I say, vermin control. The lead shot is very uniform and shiny in appearance and specifically engineered to Lyalvale’s specification, ensuring excellent patterns, even at longer ranges.
Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, Lyalvale carefully blends powders to ensure consistent ballistics across its entire cartridge range while also minimising recoil for a softer feel on the shoulder. The factory-indicated speed is approximately 1,350fps, which is achieved with a green flake-powder loading, which Express also uses in its Power Red and Blue cartridges.

Pattern boards
I used the English Sporter in several shotguns and found, as stated, that the recoil was very modest, as were the noise levels, so this is definitely a cartridge that one could shoot for prolonged periods of time. Maybe even on a simulated game shoot, where you may need a little more oomph for longer shots.
Using the Browning Shadow, which was fitted with ¼ and ½ chokes, we had some very tight and evenly spread patterns when the boards were set up at 30 yards. Ejection was brisk and smooth, with no sticky cases, and the recoil was mild and very straight in line, so muzzle flip was reduced to a minimum.
With the ¼ choke fitted, we had a very respectable 243 strikes on the board and, as previously mentioned, good overall distribution, with 93 inner hits and 150 outers. There was no bunching and only a few, if any, holes in the pattern.
Next, the ½ choke, and again, a really good, quite tight pattern from the English Sporter cartridges. For clays, you really don’t want any holes in the pattern, as some of those minis or even normal-sized clays have a troublesome knack of slipping through even the best patterns when you least expect it. Now, the pellet count shot up to 301 total strikes, with 117 inner hits and the remaining around the circumference of 30”. There was a slight right-hand bias, but the wind was a bit gusty, which can affect the small, light No.7.5 pellets.

Conclusion
Designed to be economical and mild on the shoulder for clubs to use on their clay ranges, I would say, judging by their performance, Lyalvale has met this brief admirably. Personally, I would also use them for squirrels and rabbits, but that’s just me, as they are a great patterning and performing cartridge at a good price point. GM

Contact:
Lyalvale Express -
www.lyalvaleexpress.com