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Thread: BUCKSHOT: Fact VS. Fiction.

  1. #81
    Boolit Master schutzen-jager's Avatar
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    centershot could you please post the sources for your justice dept. + specific law enforcement testing agencies ? - every testing i have seen + performed show that at room distances the small shot retains mass + penetrates almost like a solid - hunting distances have little correlation to room or across table uses - increasing pellet size decreases occurrence of multi pellet hits - center hits by 2 #1 buck is more effective in mass + penetration then 1 hit with 00 or 000 -
    never pick a fight with an old man - if he is too old to fight he will just kill you -
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  2. #82
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    I’ve killed several large hogs caught in live traps, using a 12 gauge and 7-1/2 shot. All were shot in the head and died immediately. The entire charge stopped in the skull and the entrance wound wasn’t much larger than the bore. Ranges were point blank up to maybe 8-10 yards at most. A human would need to be wearing body armor to have any chance of walking away at those ranges.

  3. #83
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    Quote Originally Posted by HWooldridge View Post
    I’ve killed several large hogs caught in live traps, using a 12 gauge and 7-1/2 shot. All were shot in the head and died immediately. The entire charge stopped in the skull and the entrance wound wasn’t much larger than the bore. Ranges were point blank up to maybe 8-10 yards at most. A human would need to be wearing body armor to have any chance of walking away at those ranges.
    One can also make highly frangible 12 ga solids. Take a birdshot load and thoroughly mix the shot with hot wax. Makes a super large glaser safety slug. There are you tube videos on how to do that.
    Last edited by barnetmill; 11-02-2024 at 07:15 AM.

  4. #84
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    I remember when I was quite young, and elderly uncle (who was a very skilled hunter) telling me about doing that during the Great Depression. Money was very tight, so he could only afford shot shells. He would carry a stub of candle in his pocket, and if his dogs bayed a pig while out hunting, he would pry open the crimp right there, pour the shot out into his hand, light the candle, and dribble the wax back in with the shot, load up and kill the pig.
    The sheep spends it's life fearful of the wolf, only to be eaten by the shepherd.

  5. #85
    Boolit Master schutzen-jager's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by HWooldridge View Post
    I’ve killed several large hogs caught in live traps, using a 12 gauge and 7-1/2 shot. All were shot in the head and died immediately. The entire charge stopped in the skull and the entrance wound wasn’t much larger than the bore. Ranges were point blank up to maybe 8-10 yards at most. A human would need to be wearing body armor to have any chance of walking away at those ranges.
    confirms my findings i found in my actual testing -
    utilization for law enforcement usage has totally different parameters than in home defensive use - a miss with birdshot is totally less likely to harm someone in next room or in neighbors house like an errant buckshot load will -
    Last edited by schutzen-jager; 11-02-2024 at 10:01 AM.
    never pick a fight with an old man - if he is too old to fight he will just kill you -
    in this current crisis our government is not the solution , it is the problem ! -

    ILLEGITIMI NON CARBORUNDUM

    as they say in latin

  6. #86
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    Quote Originally Posted by schutzen-jager View Post
    confirms my findings i found in my actual testing -
    utilization for law enforcement usage has totally different parameters than in home defensive use - a miss with birdshot is totally less likely to harm someone in next room or in neighbors house like an errant buckshot load will -
    Yes, and you might ask why I used 7-1/2 shot instead of something larger - in every case, we were hunting birds but ended up checking traps and found the hogs.

    When I was a teenager, a friend wanted to hunt hogs with a bow and asked me to come along with a shotgun for backup. We were originally hunting quail on that occasion and his bow hunting idea was sort of a last minute thing, and we didn’t have any buckshot. He did hit a smallish hog through the ribs and we went into heavy brush to find it; the boar gave a short charge then turned sideways and I popped him in the ear socket with a quail load from about 5-6 steps. He died immediately.

    Most any shotgun charge under 10 yards or so will make a mess out of whatever it connects with.

  7. #87
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    Quote Originally Posted by HWooldridge View Post
    Yes, and you might ask why I used 7-1/2 shot instead of something larger - in every case, we were hunting birds but ended up checking traps and found the hogs.

    When I was a teenager, a friend wanted to hunt hogs with a bow and asked me to come along with a shotgun for backup. We were originally hunting quail on that occasion and his bow hunting idea was sort of a last minute thing, and we didn’t have any buckshot. He did hit a smallish hog through the ribs and we went into heavy brush to find it; the boar gave a short charge then turned sideways and I popped him in the ear socket with a quail load from about 5-6 steps. He died immediately.

    Most any shotgun charge under 10 yards or so will make a mess out of whatever it connects with.
    Birdshot loads in shotguns have been killing people for a long time.

  8. #88
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    I have many shotguns and all are useful for every task on my humble 60-acre farm. All my loads are game/use specific. I use everything from slug, and buckshot up to #9 shot. For night patrol for dog walk at midnight, I find #4 Buck, 00 Buck and slug has always served me well since 1988 in rural PA. If it has a heartbeat, a 12 Gauge will fill the bill.

    Be well.

    Adam

  9. #89
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    Quote Originally Posted by Adam Helmer View Post
    I have many shotguns and all are useful for every task on my humble 60-acre farm. All my loads are game/use specific. I use everything from slug, and buckshot up to #9 shot. For night patrol for dog walk at midnight, I find #4 Buck, 00 Buck and slug has always served me well since 1988 in rural PA. If it has a heartbeat, a 12 Gauge will fill the bill.

    Be well.

    Adam
    if one could only have one gun for my part of the country, a 12 gauge with adjustable choke would be the best compromise. Like all compromises it will fail at many things, but will excel at anything up to 40 yards and is still not without effect at longer ranges.

  10. #90
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    Quote Originally Posted by barnetmill View Post
    if one could only have one gun for my part of the country, a 12 gauge with adjustable choke would be the best compromise. Like all compromises it will fail at many things, but will excel at anything up to 40 yards and is still not without effect at longer ranges.
    Other than bird hunting, some LE and some military applications a shotgun is not close to being remotely the best compromise if it "will fail at many things". Lots of other options that will not "fail" when a shotgun is totally inadequate.
    2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. - "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

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  11. #91
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    barnetmill,

    YOUNG Lad. Sir, you DO have a keen Head for figuring. LOL. Yessir, we cannot figure what is coming down the road. A 12 gauge loaded any which way beats any 9mm. 45 or 40 all Hollow! One night, just before I brought out my 40 pound female Blue Heeler, Nikki, I held my 12 gauge pump shotgun at midnight and saw a huge Bear 15 feet away under the birdfeeder.

    I yelled to the bear, "Git!" He/She stayed in place and merely looked at me! Ok, I worked the Boston Projects and know how to do TOUGH! I loaded 00/Slug/00 and stepped out on my stoop to continue the negotiations. The bear SLOWLY Walked past me around the side of my house.

    Buckshot, Slugs and #4 Buckshot have their place. One SIZE does NOT fit all. Get Smart. LOL.

  12. #92
    Boolit Master
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    Quote Originally Posted by M-Tecs View Post
    Other than bird hunting, some LE and some military applications a shotgun is not close to being remotely the best compromise if it "will fail at many things". Lots of other options that will not "fail" when a shotgun is totally inadequate.
    Different strokes for different folks. Being able to kill birds and other small moving things in a survival situation is extremely important. As I said it is a compromise. The main failing of distance and my AO is heavily forested. At close range the shotgun is superior. Most killing if I have to do it either will be at night or at close range. Different strokes. I can get done most of what I need with a 12 ga. Remember I said for under my conditions. That is my opinion and will stick to it.

  13. #93
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    Quote Originally Posted by Adam Helmer View Post
    barnetmill,

    YOUNG Lad. Sir, you DO have a keen Head for figuring. LOL. Yessir, we cannot figure what is coming down the road. A 12 gauge loaded any which way beats any 9mm. 45 or 40 all Hollow! One night, just before I brought out my 40 pound female Blue Heeler, Nikki, I held my 12 gauge pump shotgun at midnight and saw a huge Bear 15 feet away under the birdfeeder.

    I yelled to the bear, "Git!" He/She stayed in place and merely looked at me! Ok, I worked the Boston Projects and know how to do TOUGH! I loaded 00/Slug/00 and stepped out on my stoop to continue the negotiations. The bear SLOWLY Walked past me around the side of my house.

    Buckshot, Slugs and #4 Buckshot have their place. One SIZE does NOT fit all. Get Smart. LOL.
    I never said that.

  14. #94
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    At about 6 feet #8 shot out of a 20 gauge Browning A5 put a small hole (smaller than the diameter of my thumb) through 3/4 inch pine and a layer of shingles. After that my aunt insisted that my uncle not leave his shot gun loaded when their grandkids were around.
    Spell check doesn't work in Chrome, so if something is spelled wrong, it's just a typo that I missed.

  15. #95
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    I’m retired LE as well. Worked for a Sheriff’s Department, Coroner’s Office, and Probation Office for, combined, over 33 years. Also a police firearms instructor, armorer, and all-around firearm enthusiast since I was about 6 years old. Nowadays, in retirement, I teach Concealed Carry and do threat assessments for church security teams as well as teaching field safety at a state level for the Courts.

    As far as Buckshot is concerned, it is a poor performer with a huge reputation. The real shotgun killer is a slug. Breneke, BRI Sabots, and some exotics, all of which have excellent accuracy, are the real killers from a shotgun.

    Buckshot, as a Military/LE tool, was invented for shooting escaping prisoners at distance in the early 1900s. 00 Buck became the optimum for this use, because 1-2 pellets hitting an escapee at 60-70 yards was strong enough to stop the runner, and the spread meant that the minimum wage, unskilled (not a dig; there was zero training in those days) guards typical of that era, had a chance of putting those couple pellets on the runner at distance with 1-3 shots fired.

    Because Shotguns are rather authoritative as an anti-personnel tool, and mil/LE used 00, it caught on in the civilian world, and here we are 120+ years later with “Double-Ought” being some sort of he-man load of death and destruction…

    Different pellet sizes came about due to stacking issues in shells in different gauges. 16-ga, 20-ga, and some dormant gauges like 10-ga, 11-ga, and 14-ga, all benefitted from changing buckshot size from what was standard in 12-ga. Keep in mind, until the 70s or 80s, and for some time after that, buckshot was loaded in layers of 3 on top of felt wads. When plastic shot-cups were applied to buckshot, suddenly the traditional BS sizes for their respective gauges, didn’t fit in layers of 3 anymore. Some companies stayed with traditional sizes or went larger and switched to layers of 2 pellets, and some went smaller. Nowadays, some of the big advancements are thick-walled shot-cups, and the BS has gotten even smaller. Federal Flight-Control “00 Buck” uses .310-.315” pellets - half way between 0 and #1 Buck. Yet, they still call it “00 Buck.” (Marketing - see above; the public has assumed “Double-Ought” is magic, so don’t you dare to mark the flight control BS loads #1 Buck! )

    Fast forward to the 1990s and ballistics gel and penetration standards. Suddenly we find 00 Buck over-penetrates, going 18”+/- through an FBI standard gel block… #4 Buck goes 10-12”, and under-penetrates. Want to guess what goes 13-15”? Yep, #1 Buck. All of a sudden Federal buys the patent for Flight Control (along with 3-5 others, IIRC) from the inventor, and “Double-Ought” Flight control becomes (secretly?) in between #1 and 0Buck…

    Other than the marketing BS of calling it 00 Buck, when it’s really .310-.315”, Federal Flight Control is unquestionably the best tactical or hunting buckshot load out there. Science over a historically misbegotten reputation… And, sorry to the OP, but #4 Buck is only useful for wounding escaping prisoners at distance, or for very close-range lethal use. The old standard (given no flight control wad, or other thick-cup wads with buffer) is 1” of spread per yard of distance, so 10 yards (30’) is all #4Buck is good for, because it’s only reliably lethal when 80% of the pellets hit. It’s shallow penetration in ballistics gel is also an issue (although not really at short ranges, like that 10 yards).


    Quote Originally Posted by centershot View Post
    No, it isn't! Law enforcement testing and Justice Department reports have shown the fallacy of this! Birdshot, even at close range, does not pnentrate deeply enough to be effective at stopping an intruder, especially if they're cranked up on drugs. The pattern tests with #4 buck show higher pellet count than the larger 00, 0, and 1 buck but 4 buck penetrates poorly. Many of us have discovered that to increase killing efficiency on game, you increase the SIZE of the shot, not the pellet count. No one I know hunts pheasant with #9 shot, we use 5's and 4's. Why? Because large shot breaks bones and penetrates. The same applies to two-legged adversaries. There's a reason I use #2 shot for turkeys!
    This is absolutely false. Somewhere you got bad information. At home defense distances, like 10-20’ (7 yards) bird shot will routinely penetrate an average man’s torso. How am I so sure? Over the years I handled four death cases with shotguns at close range with bird shot. Biggest was #3 shot in an old “duck and goose” load at contact distance, and two were with #7-1/2 shot, one at contact distance and the other 12’ away. The last one was with #6 “squirrel and rabbit” at about 4-5’. In all of these cases, the entire load of shot entered as a solid mass with the wad, and in all cases 100% of the shot was spread out in a layer under the skin on the far side of the body. Being a gun guy, and our very experienced pathologist being a gun guy, I asked him why the consistent results when the sizes of shot and distances varied. The answer is simple. Human skin is very elastic and birdshot of any size and small buckshot have lost enough of their energy in passing through the body, that when they hit the rear layer of skin, it stretches like elastic, catches the shot, and then snaps back against the body.
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  16. #96
    Boolit Master schutzen-jager's Avatar
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    MakeMineA10mm -
    excellent + informative post - you + several other posters have confirmed my findings of bird shot performance at room distances -
    Last edited by schutzen-jager; 11-03-2024 at 09:48 AM.
    never pick a fight with an old man - if he is too old to fight he will just kill you -
    in this current crisis our government is not the solution , it is the problem ! -

    ILLEGITIMI NON CARBORUNDUM

    as they say in latin

  17. #97
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    As a kid I loaded a lot of 12-gauge 1 1/8 oz #77 1/2 shot trap loads for dad and myself. The ones that did not pass the final quality check were saved for tree and branch trimming for tee stands that we would prep while pheasant hunting. Same for the early low velocity steel waterfowl loads that become useless when the higher velocity steel loads came out.

    A 12-gauge trap load at very close range will fully penetrate surprisingly large trees. Taking down 6" to 8" trees was very doable with 1/2 dozen shoots. It worked great on branches also.
    2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. - "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

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