Further thoughts on buckshot

Something made me remember a story I thought I'd add to my previous post of buckshot tests.

This is from my Dad. One day he and the county sheriff were working a roadblock looking for a bank robber. Who chose to head in their direction. He spotted the roadblock and cut off the highway onto a farm road, and the chase was on. A couple of miles along he either blew a tire or blew the engine(I can't remember which) and got out of the car as Dad and the sheriff slid to a stop about fifty yards away.

The bad guy jumped out and popped a couple of rounds at them with a .38 snubbie as the sheriff laid the shotgun(Remington 870 with 18" barrel) over the roof of his car and Dad took a rest with his .357 on his. The sheriff fired one round of 12-pellet 00 buck and the guy threw down his gun and surrendered. Which probably saved his life, as from a rest at that range Dad would have put a 180-grain soft-point through his brisket.

Turned out he the guy was untouched. As Dad recounted, he saw a puff of dust between the guy's feet, there was one dent in the car body to left and one to right of him, and robber swore he heard one pass by his head; between those and realizing he was about to get perforated by one or the other of them he decided to give up. That's four out of 12 pellets passing within 12-18" of the guy, all the others going off somewhere. That's pretty bad, especially considering each of those round pellets, at that range, had also lost a lot of velocity.

None of the buckshot available at the time would have grouped any better. There are a LOT of different brands/loads available now, and if one won't group well out of your scattergun, chances are another will. Which means, get a box each of several brands/types and try them out on paper where you can actually see and measure the results. I found that in mine the Hornady TAP grouped a lot tighter at home-defense ranges than the other brands I tried, which means that it would have a lot longer effective range for me than the others. Depending on your circumstances/preference, you might prefer having one that spreads out a lot faster for a better chance of getting a piece of a moving bad guy at close ranges.

One thing I would not keep loaded for home defense, as a general rule, would be slugs. Just too much penetration in an urban neighborhood. I read a few months ago where some city SWAT team decided to check that out and fired several slug loads from the street into an abandoned house; they found that every round, unless it hit something like the hot water tank, completely penetrated the house and exited the back wall with enough velocity to be lethal. I tried out some of the Aguila mini-shell slugs in my Benelli right after I got it, and they had noticeably lower velocity; for some circumstances they might be a good choice for a shotgun where you want more precision without the overpenetration hazard. But that's just a guess, and there's the fact that some pumps will not reliably feed them without modification(they will not cycle autoloaders).

From the Box o' Truth and my tests, it looks like- generally speaking- the low-recoil buckshot loads may well group tighter out of most guns than standard or magnum loads. Personally, I'd rather have the lesser recoil and tighter groups than the little more power, but that's my choice. You'll have to decide what would be best for your circumstances and choose accordingly.