Quotation from: Manual of Surgery

Written by: Alexander Miles and Alexis Thomson


#Wounds by Sporting Guns.#--In the common sporting or scatter gun, with
which accidents so commonly occur during the shooting season, the charge
of small shot or pellets leave the muzzle of the gun as a solid mass
which makes a single ragged wound having much the appearance of that
caused by a single bullet. At a distance of from four to five feet from
the muzzle the pellets begin to disperse so that there are separate
punctures around the main central wound. As the range increases, these
outlying punctures make a wider and wider pattern, until at a distance
of from eighteen to twenty feet from the muzzle, the scattering is
complete, there is no longer any central wound, and each individual
pellet makes its own puncture. From these elementary data, it is usually
possible, from the features of the wound, to arrive at an approximately
accurate conclusion regarding the range at which the gun was discharged,
and this may have an important bearing on the question of accident,
suicide, or murder.

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