Low velocity 12 Ga. RB load

[pipehand]

I'm a bit out of my element here as it's been 20 years since I've reloaded a shotshell. Still have the Lee Loadall, and got a MEC Jr in a bulk trade a while back.
The reason I'm posting here is that I am looking for a quiet, low recoiling load for my Dad to use to thin out some of the nuisance deer in his yard. Due to regs where he lives, he can only use a pistol or shotgun. If he uses a pistol he has to be more feet away from neighbors structures than he has available. A shotgun would work well for the less than 20 yard shot he'd be making, but he is concerned about noise-- he doesn't want to scare the bunny hugging suburbanites with the boom of a full zoot slug load. I suggested that he buy a box of the "tactical" slugs.
I got to thinking(dangerous ground to tread on) about what it really takes to kill a deer. Not much if the projectile is put in the right place. Arrows work. A 45 Colt at 900 fps shoots completely through them and lets the blood out. A one ounce 70caliber bullet at 1500fps just seems like too much of a good thing.
I have experimented with "Cats Sneeze" loads in a variety of rifled metallic cased firearms, but don't have a clue how to safely reduce loads in a shotgun.
Anyone here ever try roundball loads in the 700 to 900fps range? Lee keyed slugs? Dad has an 870 Remington with screw in chokes. He's also living on the othe side of the country, but is a retired machinist with the tools to measure bore and choke if I need him to measure his barrel.
Anyone out there work up a safe 12 gauge load that sounds like a screen door slamming when shot out of a 28" barrel?

[turbo1889]

The closest thing I've done to what you are looking for is some experimental loads with the IMR Trail Boss powder or the "grey cheerios powder" as some call it. I was using dead soft pure lead 68-cal round balls inside Fed. 12S4 wads with an 18ga. hard card under the ball inside the wad and used COW (Cream of Wheat) to buffer the ball inside the wad. This was loaded in those cheapo junk Federal paper base wad hulls that come in the Wal-Mart value packs of cheapo bird shot. I used Fed-209A primers to ensure good ignition since I knew I was going to be using a light charge and didn't want any bloopers. Ten grains charge level is where I started and I messed around with it a little from there both up and down to see how low or high I could go with that kind of combination. Fifteen grains is about as high a charge as you should go with that combination for safety; you can actually go higher but I'm putting a healthy margin on that since this is a pet load and not pressure tested (Use at your own risk).

Not sure if they will be quiet enough for what you’re trying to do; it’s pretty hard to make a shotgun quiet. But it is a place to start. Since the RCBS 0.678" RB mold is so expensive you might want to consider just buying some of those size balls from Track of the Wolf to try such a load out. I get my 18ga. nitro cards manufacturer direct from circlefly.com You can also use 20ga. nitro cards but they are just slightly small for the Federal wads and aren’t a perfect fit like the 18ga. ones are. Track of the Wolf probably has 18ga. hard card too.

[shotman]

solid ball is going to move a long way like a marble. would go for 00 or 000 buck cut crimp off and seal with candle wax have to try but herco /bluedot at 13gr or so should be good to 50yds about 6 pellletts

[turbo1889]

solid ball is going to move a long way like a marble. . .

That's why I suggested dead soft pure lead ball only; they turn silver dollar shaped when they hit something. Hard cast balls on the other hand can bounce and glance off of stuff and keep right on going.

Buck-shot could be good but can be interesting to try to get a tight pattern and can take a lot of load development to find a load that performs, especially with soft buck shot and then we start talking reduced velocity as well and things get even more critical as far as maintaining the necessary qualities to ensure a clean kill.

Truth be told, if I were in such a situation as described by the OP. My go to would be a long barreled single shot pistol like the contender with a red dot type sight chambered for 45-Colt and loaded with a hollow base full wadcutter cast from 30/1 alloy propelled by a small charge of fast burning powder which combined with a long barrel single shot pistol will limit muzzle pressures and thus noise. Stalk in close and wait for the right shot preferably a quartering away shot and put it right in the ribs behind the shoulder and make ground burger out of the heart. Problem is at least around here they limit you to a max 8" barrel length for handguns for the handgun/muzzle-loader/shotgun only areas and I'm thinking like a 14" barrel length at least with that idea.

[pipehand]

Thanks for the replies. Definitely looking for a single projectile, not buckshot. I had thought about Trailboss, as it is about equivalent by weight to Red Dot. Am wondering if I should use whatever hull has the least amount of internal space. Anyone know if there is any danger in starting with really small powder charges, and working up?

[turbo1889]

. . . Am wondering if I should use whatever hull has the least amount of internal space. Anyone know if there is any danger in starting with really small powder charges, and working up?

The paper base wad Federal hulls pretty much meet the description of "whatever hull has the least amount of internal space" for the 12ga. 2-3/4" hull length with the possible exception of some of the 3-1/2" hulls if you cut them down to 2-3/4" hulls.

So long as you use enough powder to fill the cup base of the wad and any recess in the base-wad of the hull there is no danger, however, if you use less then that there is indeed danger since you will have empty air space in the powder area even with the wad all the way down as far as it can go in the hull. All shotgun loads are compressed loads, and it isn't by any accident. Compressed loads don't detonate, uncompressed loads under the right (errrr ~ wrong) conditions can and will detonate and a shotgun cannot handle the massive pressure spike of a detonation event (70+ thousand PSI) even one with a small load of powder that normally wouldn't have enough energy to do any damage even under detonation in a regular (metallic cartridge) firearm.

That is the main reason why I used Trail Boss. The same weight charge of TB takes up way more volumetric space inside the hull then Red Dot or just about any other powder for that matter. Thus you can use a lower charge level that still has enough volume to fill up the minimum amount of volume to make sure there is no loose air space in the powder compartment under the wad and the powder charge is properly compressed as it should be.

[blaster]

I stepped down lee slugs from a reduced recoil trap load of clays until I stuck one at 5gr iirc. At least from the shooters perspective, it never was all that quiet from a 22" rifled barrel.

[dogbert41]

.690 round ball mold from Lee is about $20. You can work up a nice soft load for that I'm sure. Probably easier if you roll crimp if you are going to use less and less powder.

[pipehand]

I guess Dad got over his worries about the noise. He got a big doe this afternoon. Mom sent me a very blurry photo on my cell phone. He used a factory Remington slugger for a lung shot at less than 35 yards. Had to cut a phone call short as Dad and Mom were in the midst of skinning/butchering. Dad will be 73 in a couple of weeks and he got his first deer!

[JIMinPHX]

If you take a look at this thread - http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=86712 You will see that I managed to get pretty good results from the Lee 1-oz slug at around 1,000fps by pushing it with some green dot. It's not as quiet as you are asking for, but it is quite comfortable to shoot & not nearly as loud as its max dram counterpart. You may be able to go down lower than that. I don't know. I just stuck to the minimum load data that I could find for the same weight of shot.