Most commonly, 12-gauge shotguns are the go-to choice for defensive purposes when a shotgun is needed, and have from 27 No. As for terminal performance, the more shot you have in a shell, the more holes you make in the bad guy. A century ago, looking down the barrel of a shotgun was about as fearsome a thing as you could face. Browning BT-99 Shotgun Review: Stylish Break-Action Single. But what if circumstances dictated that you had to take that shot anyway? According to an NRA Shooting Illustrated article from Dec 2009, at 25 yards a single 00 buck pellet would have 210 foot pounds of energy. Winchester makes a 2 3/4 inch 12 gauge shell with 3 pellets of #00 buckshot and a 1 oz. It seems that in the oldest question of weight vs. number, 00 buckshot has been the drawn line in the sand. But, the shotgun has remained popular as a defensive option. Buckshot-loaded shotguns are short-range firearms. Price: $8.49 per 10-rnd. Follow Lucky Gunner Lounge from your Inbox! That being said, for some applications and risk assessments, #1 or #4 buckshot can be better choices. Although some consider it outdated, the Remington Model 1100 is an excellent choice for home defense, law enforcement, hunting and competition. This is generally loaded with nine of the 33 caliber lead balls to go about 1,250 feet per second. Yeah. Wait, will or can? Do notice that at longer ranges, the shotgun loses its ability to kill very rapidly. This minimum velocity was found in Phase I, the terminal ballistics portion of the testing. You can hit more, and each pellet will do less, to the terminal end of losing its effectiveness at all. At our distances this would mean: 12 feet = 4 inches. We used two different loads: Federal FliteControl #1 and Federal FliteControl #00 8-pellet. Dispersion of buckshot pattern with distance. Know that this list is by no means all-inclusive, and results will vary depending on the shotgun/choke used; every combination is different. Depending on the particular load and the shotgun's choke, at somewhere between 20 and 30 yards, a few of the pellets will have spread wider than the chest of a silhouette target. CHRIS: If its the only we could come up with some scenario where it makes sense but its going to be pretty rare. Brass Fetcher Ballistic Testing recently conducted an eye-opening ballistic gelatin test of buckshot at 50 yards distance. Duvalls character, Boss Spearman, fires at a bad guy outside a shack wall from inside a small room. JOHN: Would you still be hitting stuff at that distance? I know that [#00 buckshot] penetrates a little more at 10 feet in the standard test, and for us, we verified that. The rule for shotgun patterning has been that you usually get about 1 inch of spread for every yard from the target. Buckshot traveling fast enough to make incapacitating hit at this range (12.0 or deeper penetration in nominal 10% ballistic gelatin). You can, and its nice to know that the spread will not be too large to recklessly endanger a neighborhood. 4 pellets at 1200 fps. Instead, they comprehensively tested patterns with 18 barrels and various chokes, including a back-bored barrel almost the the muzzle. Since there's no perfect answer when it comes to terminal performance, you need to consider that the deep-penetrating 00-buck load is capable of shooting through walls in your home and retaining enough energy to cause a lethal wound. The gauge, however, does matter as a matter of how many projectiles are fired. The number of the 0.33-inch-diameter pellets contained within the shell depends on its length; the utilitarian 2-inch usually holds eight to 12 pellets, depending on whether a wad with a cushion section and shot cup is utilized. Remington 1100 Tactical is a Do-All 12-Gauge Shotgun. Enough so to give you a shot spread about the size of two fists. So, that was kinda interesting. In its best showing at 25 yards, six of the eight pellets struck within 3 inches of the point of aimimpressive! I think if I had used a more open choke, the 00 would have shot better. box at fleetfarm.com. Only a soft recovery (shooting gelatin, water or cotton) will tell you which type of buckshot your shotshell produces. Forget about 20 gauge with anything larger than #3 buckshot. With slugs, you can easily hit man-sized targets out to 100+ yards, but the deep penetration is a huge liability inside a structure - especially multi-unit housing structures like apartment complexes. It is not intended for use with loads featuring the FliteControl and Versatite wads. Shotshells contain lead spheres of different diameter and these different diameters are optimal for different usages. Even with reduced-recoil 00 buckshot, the 1 inch per yard pattern seems improbable. Bad guys do not go to a bad-sounds-that-make-you-run school. The Shooter's Log, is to provide informationnot opinionsto our customers and the shooting community. The Best Turkey-Killing Pattern for $15 a Box? JOHN: Right. Would you get this with birdshot? Federal Power-Shok BuckshotIf the previously mentioned load is too expensive or harsh recoil-wise, then Federal has another option in its Power-Shok buckshot load. JOHN: So for me, I guess the big takeaway was that inside of 25, the shotgun is devastating. The patterns at 20 yards. A follow-on test would include #1 buckshot and standard velocity 00 buckshot. Results and Conclusion: This shoulder-jarring load opened my eyes to recoilits the equivalent of a 1-ounce turkey loadand excellent patterning. The pattern diameter of the buffered load at 40 yards was 31.65 inches . Unlike standard chokes, the extended, Boar Blaster has a series of five steps leading to the parallel section. In each express magnum. I would like to point out that you can get #2 buck in 20 ga, but only in 3 magnums, if that is of interest to you. On the other hand, Remington offers an eight-pellet Managed-Recoil, 00-buck load at 1,200 fps with recoil half that of the Magnum load. It works great in almost any shotgun and makes one big fist-sized hole out to at least 10 yards. #shotgun #12gauge #remington870In this video I shoot 2 3/4\" 00 Buckshot at 25, 50, and even 100 yards. It's capable of dislodging fillings, changing your mind and blurring vision during the process, making practice as pleasant as visiting your mother-in-law and fast follow-up shots as difficult as a return visit. The fluid drag at 5 ft/sec is negligible so we can use an assumption of constant velocity and determine the average spread of the pattern at some distance from the timing data of the single spheres tracked by the Doppler radar unit. We talk about the combat mindset, but how do we create it in ourselves and put it into practice? The rounds were shot from a Mossberg 500 12-gauge shotgun with a 20-inch barrel length and full choke. The final shotgun was a Remington 870. Easily. Tactical Life Gun Magazine: Gun news, gun reviews and gun magazines for gun enthusiasts, military and law enforcement, You use of this website constitutes and manifests your acceptance of our. CHRIS: I dont know if you guys know about the #1 FliteControl, but its a difficult load to get ahold of, so we didnt have a whole lot of it on hand. What buckshot does at 50 yards or choke of the barrel, is really not relevant (other than over penetration) inside ones home or apartment. The 00 buckshot (plated, pattern-controlled) load maintains a hit probability of 50+% out to 52 yards, which is the limiting factor in maximum effective range because the individual pellets are sufficiently massive and have a high enough velocity to retain terminal effectiveness to a distance of 104 yards. JOHN: So, still potentially lethal absolutely. At 35 yards, the same combination kept five buckshot within 7 inches. Got agun that's collecting dust? Federal Force X2 Finally, we've got the Federal Force X2 buckshot. Distances between muzzle and target for the #4 buckshot and unplated #1 buckshot correspond to the maximum distance at which a single shot pellet is expected to be traveling fast enough to score an incapacitating hit. Well, let's try them at 12 yards, about as far as one might expect to shoot at in-the-home distances. *Distance in feet and buckshot spread in inches. (Extrapolated from another figure for 35 pelets). In fact, on one target, all pellets fell within 7 inches of the point of aim at 35 yards. All sources will remain confidential! Beyond 30 yards, you'll struggle to keep half the pellets on a silhouette. [Federals advertised velocity is 1100 for the #1 versus 1145 for the #00. 12-Gauge Gunfight: How to Win With Your Favorite Tactical Shotgun. If your duties or circumstances lead you to carry a shotgun for self-defense when outdoors, we encourage you to make use of shotshells utilizing a pattern-controlled shotcup and copper-plated shot pellets. Get Guns.com offers and news!! box at MidwayUSA.com. This serves to give an idea as to how a shotshell will perform at the room distances common during a home defense scenario. This created devilishly destructive wound cavitiesnot just holes like the lead bullets of the past. There were no issues with cycling. I test Federal flite control buckshot and standard buckshot to see the difference in patterns.Check out MY SPONSORS - http://www.craftholsters.com and http://www.texbushcraft.com VISIT MY WEBSITE - http://www.newyorkprepper.com for FREE DISCUSSION FORUM, blog, and articlesLeave a tip if you feel compelled, it helps support this channel. A load the Brits developed years ago. In order to provide a further verification check, a Winchester 1300 12 gauge with 28 barrel (cylinder bore) was shot at 25 yards distance from 10% ballistic gelatin blocks with all shotshell types used in this report. Marketed as reduced-recoil, the shell nonetheless propelled its 1 ounce payload to 1350 fps. The pattern is youre accountable for every single round in that pattern onto a man-sized target, easily. JOHN: Yeah. Patterns were the same or larger than those with the cylinder-bore choke. We see a close correlation between the terminal performance of the single-launched buckshot and the factory shotshells. So we set up a couple of blocks and shot it at ten feet. Federal's Personal Defense, Copper-Plated, nine-pellet 00-buck load with the FlightControl Wad consistently delivered tight patterns half as large as the other loads tested. CHRIS: Yeah, theyre around 1100 feet per second. Hit probability was determined by shooting a Mossberg 590 from a shooting bench at various distances from a FLETC Transitional Target II with the (5) different cartridge types.