Are Mini Shotgun Shells Viable for Self-Defense? This particular load includes the Federal FliteControl wad, which improves performance in my experience. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. . Join F&S+ to read exclusive stories by your favorite writers. Cylinder bore shotgun in use. 00 and 000 buck pattern into 15" patterns. Shotguns are wierd and very "individual", but all three of my M4's have LOVED this combination. Since shotguns are deployed in non- spontaneous shootings where law enforcement or military members have the time to access and deploy them, distances in scattergun shootings are going to tend to be longer. The load that is a sure killer at 40 yards may be a crippler at 50. You can get more. What load? What's the Maximum Effective Range of Buckshot? *I have found the *rougher* the choke, the tighter the pattern, all things being equal. The best was with a plain Jane improve cylinder and Federal Flight control wad 00 buckshot. Hornady Zombie @ 21ft. The remaining shotshells were shot at 40 yards distance. A follow-on test would include #1 buckshot and standard velocity 00 buckshot. Comparing the results between the Mossberg 500 and 590A1 is pretty interesting, as 4 inches less barrel did not make that much of a difference in the spread pattern. I will aim for the front of the shoulder, near the base of the neck. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The big advantage of using a slug is that it has a much longer effective range than buckshot. Its at home in both the deer gun and the tactical shotgun. JOHN: So for me, I guess the big takeaway was that inside of 25, the shotgun is devastating. This site is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. I was discouraged by the results, which prompted me to head back out and pattern test both shotguns with a small variety of ammo on hand.----- I used two guns for testing. At SHOT Show, George and Scott Trulock of Trulock Chokes showed me their new Boar Blaster buckshot choke tube. Of course, do you want to use a shotgun beyond 25 yards? I don't like the risk of getting a gut shot or poorly wounded deer just because they were at 50 yards. Much better than aiming at the head. The full pattern guys like smaller buckshot so they have more pellets in the target. link to What is a Pistol Caliber Carbine. This is a 12.5" pattern, which is not terrible but the better quality Federal, Remington, etc with buffered shot are closer to 10" at 15 yards. For defense against people my max range with 00 buck is 15 yards and slugs 35-50 yards. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. The tested Mossberg 590 had a cylinder bore which was boresighted with a Site Lite SL-500 Ultra Mag Green Laser Boresighter to coincide with a SIG ROMEO4 red dot sight at 25 yards distance. Federal Premium LE133 00 low recoil buckshot, 8-pellet 2. Shots were fired from a standing position off a makeshift monopod. You need to make sure your bullets hit the target, not a thicket of maple saplings. With flush chokes, the taper is more pronounced creating less accuracy. An extended choke on your Benelli is going to help but maybe not as much as you need. This isn't very scientific, but the tightest patterning choke I had was an IC Benelli OEM choke that looked all grooved up inside. I have heard some good things about a neat load from the Dixie Slug Company. It has the best practical range of any hollowpoint weapon for deer hunting: about 70 yards. however, I do not recommend firing a load of buckshot at a deers head. Maybe not with the entire load, but enough to Hmmm, how many rounds are we going to fire to get enough pellets into this block?. Would you get this with birdshot? 50 feet-- penetration: same lack of penetration. GENERALY no one should need a very long shot inside their home or apartment. It does not store any personal data. The single buckshot pellets were acquired from shotshells shot from a SAAMI 12 gauge test barrel (24 length, cylinder bore) into a cotton soft-catch box (Figure 1) and were then handloaded and shot into gelatin from low-pressure handgun cartridges (Figures 2, 3, and 4) at a wide range of velocities. 50% tighter group @ 10 yards than my non PC buckshot. Ergo why smaller shot needs to be harder to perform equally to larger shot. Safe to say I wouldn't be afraid to try to kill a deer with these loads at that range (40 yards). At 25 yards, figure a decent barrel will "pattern" around 30" which is larger than the average human. CHRIS: I guess the big thing is that context is really important and shotguns can do a lot of different things depending on what hardware youre using and what ammo youre using. Wow! The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. 10" @ 10 yards, 25" @ 25 yards, 50" @ 50 yards. Your Modified choke will pattern larger . I think if I had used a more open choke, the 00 would have shot better. Ive heard heated arguments for all three. Buckshot Patter (25 yards) Good/Bad/Thoughts. With the Fiocchi Low Recoil round (8 pellet) - the group opens up to 18-20" and always seems to have at least one flier. Shot impacts to the thick blue border were not counted. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". Please be respectful of others. Buckshot loads are shotgun shells filled with pellets instead of a single projectile. . But the range to shoot patterns is the range you shoot your birds. Published Oct 10, 2019 5:15 PM. I use BB, F buck, and #4 Buck for hunting Coyotes. A very small, tight pattern with 000 or 00 buckshot is quite effective, but the smaller the pattern, the greater the possibility of a complete miss. However, nothing has outperformed Remington 000 2.75" from an IC flush-mount thus-far. Figure 15 illustrates the velocity versus penetration depths obtained for #1 buckshot single-launched buckshot and #1 buckshot shotshells. In one memorable shootout from the movie, a desperado is taking off down a street when Mississippi lets loose with his scattergun. In fact, the widest group fired, using the Vang-Comp-modified Remington 870, measured only 22 inches at 105 feet. The "rule" for a pattern is 1 inch per yard for a full choke. Posted: 12/22/2018 6:14:17 PM EST [#1] The 15 yd is smaller than 10 yds , thats pretty impressive ! For really long range shooting, Federals 00 buck loaded in its Flitecontrol wad is hard to beat for tight patterns. I will take her target shooting, but I am curious if anyone can tell me what to expect. The patterns were a single hole out to 20 feet. I will NEVER take a shot with buckshot past 40 yards. You will have the entire neck in your pattern, twice the lethal coverage. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. Anything bigger puts a serious wallop on your shoulder and the shorter ones seem to work fine. The next test platform was a Mossberg 500 with an 18-inch barrel and bead sights. My buddy runs a Benelli M4 with the MOD choke and gets consistent 7" patterns with it. You have more pellets, but less energy per pellet. Okay, now that Ive got you thinking, I will ask why the slug is more lethal. We next look at the velocity versus distance from muzzle plot for this projectile: We see that the deformed #1 buckshot sphere will have slowed down to 993 ft/sec at a distance of 29 yards from the muzzle which corresponds to the penetration depth in gelatin of 12.0. Rios Game Load C20 (20 ga 2 3/4 00 Buck) has rather optimistic ballistics. Going to order some Federal 2.75" 000 and some more REmington 000 and an LM choke instead of a CYL choke and hit the patterning board again. RE: Buckshot for deer. Buckshot pellets are significantly larger than birdshot. With spherical shotgun pellets, the only way to increase sectional density is to increase the pellet size. You really need to hit the spine. JOHN: But not passing the FBI standards. In apartments and houses one must always be concerned with over penetrationwho is on the other side of the wall. From a distance of about 8 feet, the double-barreled shotgun blows pie-pan-sized holes through the wall, cutting down his adversary. How effective is buckshot at extended ranges? A small increase in effective range will occur in hot climates and a moderate decrease in range will occur in extreme cold climates. Thats how animals run off wounded, never to be found. +1 on the extended choke. Tungsten Super Shot (TSS) has mostly been a good thing for turkey hunting. 2-3/4" with Mod. When hunting land animals with spreading shot, the only choke in existence for the task is full choke. Can 00 buckshot kill a human? And you will have a horrible time tracking it without much of any blood trail to follow. A Remington or Winchester 00 Buckshot can travel between 35 and 50 yards. Then there is the lung shot. Maybe my barrel likes it more than yours. JOHN: Would you still be hitting stuff at that distance? The Boar Blaster seemed to corral enough of the pellets and put them into the vitals to be a worthwhile buckshot choke option. I would like to point out that you can get #2 buck in 20 ga, but only in 3 magnums, if that is of interest to you. I thought what was really sort of fun was when does the shotgun become, okay, I can hit stuff reliably. One most common type of buckshot is #00 buck. This target was shot at 3 yards. But, it was a dandy. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Impact velocities used in this report were obtained from an Oehler System 85 (Figure 6) using no velocity corrections. This sphere must penetrate a minimum of 2.95 inches (75mm) but no more than 3.74 inches (95mm)". Except at under 30 yards, it doesnt have the power to bust through the hide and penetrate both lungs. Most experts agree that reduced-power 00 buck shells in 12 gauge are the best overall choice for home defense. We are compensated for referring traffic and business to Amazon and other companies linked to on this site. By itself, its not an adequate target. 12"-15" is still an improvement over the old 00 that we used to issue. Hit probabilities measured for each shotshell can be found in Table 1 below. Posts: 1,327. WS6 The Dixie Tri-Ball has 3 60 caliber lead balls in it going about 1,00 fps. Size, penetration, and energy all make buckshot more lethal than birdshot. It would no doubt perform even better with high quality buffered loads. Most stock barrels were less than .5 per yard. Great load for Hunting, Home Defense or Tactical Shooting. The suddenness of the event will degrade any shooters accuracy and the hit probability of a single projectile weapon will be correspondingly low. The gauge, however, does matter as a matter of how many projectiles are fired. If you have a personal-defense shotgun or one assigned to you, go out with the load you intend to carry and pattern the shotgun. Mean radius is defined as the average of the straight line distances between the Center-of-Shot-Group and each shot (USARIEM TECHNICAL NOTE TN-01/2 STATISTICAL MEASURES OF MARKSMANSHIP Richard F. Johnson Military Performance Division February 2001 U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine) and was determined by utilizing OnTarget TDS software (OnTarget TDS). I agree,that's the gun I use and it's a killer. I think it retarded the wad a bit. If I remember correctly, theres only 75 feet per second difference. Generally 00 buck will open up about 1 per yard traveled with a cylinder bore 12 gauge. The pellets are clustered together more than conventional wad buckshot when they reach the choke, and they are compressed against each other leading to increased deformation. Dec 25, 2018. Slugs are good to go up to about 100 yards: both because they . [Federals advertised velocity is 1100 for the #1 versus 1145 for the #00. All ballistic gelatin blocks (Figure 7) used in this evaluation were nominal 10% ballistic gelatin blocks calibrated in accordance with FBI RFP-OSCU-DSU1401 as follows (FBI RFP-OSCU-DSU1401, page 95, 2014): "Prior to the utilization of any block of gelatin, validation of the block will be tested to assure consistency of the gelatin mixture. 8 pellet Flite Control will run patterns the size of your fist at 25 yards. If you need proof, Brass Fetcher tested buckshot against ballistic gelatin at 50 yards and then managed to chronograph it at 50 yards (no small feat). 17 out of 18 landed in a 20" circle, and "four" were in the 8" center kill zone. The standard sizes of buckshot are #0, #00, #000, #1 and #4 buckshot. All between 35 and 60 yards. This particular shotgun has been customized by 870 maestro Hans Vang of Vang Comp Systems. The impact velocity versus penetration depth in ballistic gelatin for all evaluated buckshot types are below in Figure 10.