On this forum and others, threads about 'squib loads' and 'gallery loads' and loads for eliminating vermin in tight quarters...and using BPCR guns to do it with... keep popping up.
I don't have time to experiment, right now, but maybe someone with time on his hands would have an interest in this idea.
I spent most of my Vietnam tour on top of Nui Ba Den mountain...over near Tay Ninh. Because it was a 'permanent installation', the rats had moved in and multipiled.
Shooting them seemed like a pleasant distraction which might reduce the population some, but the entire peak was littered with rocks...Volkswagen-sized and larger.
That made shooting military ball, in and around our living/work area, from our issued .38 Specials seemed a little 'unsound'.
Enter 'soap loads'.
Pull the bullet from a loaded round, without spilling any powder...then press a half-used-up bar of soap down on the case mouth to cookie-cut a 'plug' that resembled an Ivory wadcutter.
They would 'gunk up' our Smith & Wessons pretty bad, but hot water followed by LSA worked OK to clean 'em up.
I never put this load on paper, but we did kill rats with it. Fired at a slab of three quarter plywood from forty feet, the slug would dig a sizeable 'gouge' into the first two or three plies.
Wonder what you would get if you poured your favorite (or perhaps not so favorite) 500 grain bullet mould full of straight beeswax - and thumb seated the 'all-lube bullet' in an unsized fireformed case, over an 'adjusted' charge, with card wads seperating the BP, oat meal, and bullet...?
It should smell like Honey Toasted Oats...cooked over charcoal...with a subtle-but-invigorating nuance of sulphur.
CM