Sunday, October 19, 2008

What's your buckshot of choice

for home defense use? #4 or 00? Magnum, standard or reduced recoil?

The 12-gauge I have for the purpose is, with magnums or standard buckshot, fairly nasty to shoot. It’s light, which is very nice, except less weight means you feel more of the recoil energy; makes practice downright uncomfortable. So I tried two loads: the Winchester Ranger low recoil, and the Hornady FPD reduced recoil, both with 00 buckshot.

The Ranger load uses eight pellets, the Hornady nine and a lower powder charge. Recoil feels about the same, definitely lower than standard(let alone magnum) loads. Both give tight patterns in across the room/across the yard ranges(my scattergun has a 18" improved-cylinder barrel), easily placing all pellets well inside COM. With a high COM aim, all pellets in the upper chest of a silhouette. And I can’t believe that, at these ranges, the slightly lower velocity of some of these will be enough to make a difference to the goblin.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I kinda like the idea of an 18" 12 ga. pump loaded with smaller shot in a spreader load. Form inside a house with sheetrock on the inside and osb on the outside anything larger than #4 is going to overpenetrate and hit things you likely don't want hit. The longest possible distance in my place is about 30 feet, 10 yards and if I fire I want whatever I'm shooting at, (more than likely in the dark), hit as many times as possible. The combined shock of five or six simultaneous hits with #4 buckshot at 20 feet is very likely to have any goblin re-thinking his career choice very severely. With a spreader load, I don't have to do more than point the shotgun, no aiming involved. I'd like that pattern to be about 30" at 30 yards.

Gerry N.

Anonymous said...

There was a post on practical machinist forum a few months ago, where a guy was writing about home made bolo rounds for dropping the local feral pigs.

Something about 6 inches of piano wire between the balls and six balls...

The poster said he used 0.062" diam wire and "nitro press crimps" (whatever they are) to form loops in the wires, which he cast into the balls

Whether he modified his ball moulds to allow them to close without getting the wires caught in the spru plate, or whether that was the fatal flaw identifying him as a bullshitter, I don't know. He didn't mention burned fingers either....

Another poster pointed out that if he ever shot a human with one, a flock of lawyers would feed themselves for years off the carcasse.

Alpacca 45

Kevin said...

I've not shot one, but the Knoxx recoil reducing stock looks like it would work at making full-house magnum buckshot loads much less unpleasant to shoot.

Anonymous said...

Nicro press swages...compressible stainless or copper pieces which are pressure crimped onto a wire.

See here:

http://www.layline.com/product/8436/381

Firehand said...

Talked to a guy a while back who had one of the Knoxx stocks, he loved it; said it made shooting magnum slugs feel like shooting birdshot.

I've heard of making the 'bolo' shot strings. One way was to cut a slot in the balls and crimp them onto the wire, one actually did machine a channel into a gang mold so the wire would fit in, then casting the balls on. Be interesting to try, but the legal mess if you used one in self-defense...