1 Copper-Plated Buckshot. That is why it's strongly recommended to keep the range below 40 yards for maximum effect if you use birdshot. All sources will remain confidential! This slows the wad ever so slightly, so that it doesnt negatively affect the pattern. As such, pushing nine pellets of 00 Buck to 1450 fps generates noticeable recoilnot intolerable, but sharp. There were no issues with cycling. 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. In fact, on one target, all pellets fell within 7 inches of the point of aim at 35 yards. JOHN: So, for anyone watching, the reason why that is, is that the #00 pellets have a little more mass behind them so theyre going to penetrate a little bit deeper if theyre moving at about the same velocity, which those loads are pretty close. 4 buck will penetrate about half as deep7 to 9 inchesas 00 buck. The 00 buckshot he used was not standard velocity, but actually reduced velocity. Home Ammunition How Does Buckshot Perform at 50 Yards? The Shooter's Log, is to provide informationnot opinionsto our customers and the shooting community. In one memorable shootout from the movie, a desperado is taking off down a street when Mississippi lets loose with his scattergun. CHRIS: Yeah, so I think if theres any big takeaway here, its that, in most cases and every shotgun is different but your pattern is going to become pretty much useless before the pellets are no longer doing what you want them to do. The standard sizes of buckshot are #0, #00, #000, #1 and #4 buckshot. $ 139.94 $ 111.51. Buckshot is the primary load carried by law enforcement in shotguns and what you'll find stuffed in many scatterguns kept for home defense. Benelli helped open the market for semi-auto shotguns in America with the show-stopping Super Black Eagle in the early 1990s. 1876 Winchester: The Rifle of Texas Ranger James B. 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Theres been a lot of interest in shotguns recently, so we decided to test two of the morepopular home defense shotgun rounds -00 buckshot and high-velocity steel BB shot. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission, which supports our community. As for patterning, this round proved to be the most difficult with which to attain satisfactory results; performance with Trulocks 0.710-inch extended choke, as well as the Benelli flush-fitting 0.703-inch, was unimpressive. The rounds were shot from a Mossberg 500 12-gauge shotgun with a 20-inch barrel length and full choke. The number of pellets per shell is governed by their size and their weight. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. In terms of range, the rule of thumb is "40/40" which means at 40 yards, birdshot shall produce a 40-inch spread pattern. Best results at 25 yards was found with an extended, Trulock 0.700-inch (light-full) choke, but the openness was still too much to continue testing at 35 yards. I try to keep with the same length shell, 2 3/4 inch, as a common factor. Copyright 2023 National Rifle Association, Women On Target Instructional Shooting Clinics, Volunteer At The Great American Outdoor Show, Marion P. Hammer Women Of Distinction Award, Women's Wildlife Management / Conservation Scholarship, National Youth Shooting Sports Cooperative Program, Remington Model 700 American Hunter Rifle Project, Federal Premium Announces Vital-Shok High Density Buckshot, New for 2023: Federal Premium No. CHRIS: If its the only we could come up with some scenario where it makes sense but its going to be pretty rare. Remington 870 18.5 inch barrel imp/Cyl with Fiocchi 8 pellet reduced recoil 00 Buck. The first was a Mossberg 590A1 with 14-inch barrel, rifle sights and a Davis speed-feed stock. Its not. What to KnowAvailable in multiple diameterstypically ranging from No. If you back off to 25 yards, hitting a moving target is more challenging, but the FliteControl has a somewhat decent spread at 25 yards. We chose those because, well, we like them first of all, but they hold a really tight pattern and its not feasible to do this at 50, 100 yards if youve got the pellets going all over the place. A 12-gauge, 2-inch load generally contains from 21 to 34 pellets, while the 3-inch variant is loaded with a whopping 41. A load the Brits developed years ago. . Browning's refined BT-99 single-shot break-action shotgun is built for busting clays and does its job with class and speed, making it a fantastic option for trap shooting fans. Of course, do you want to use a shotgun beyond 25 yards? The rule for shotgun patterning has been that you usually get about 1 inch of spread for every yard from the target. The vast majority of police shootings are close-in affairs. Wide flyers were a given with all loads. Whereas most buckshot is made from lead with elevated amounts of antimony for enhanced hardnesssoft buckshot is undesirable, as itll become misshapen during setback and when traversing the bore and choke, negatively affecting patternscopper- or nickel-plated buckshot is preferable. Witness Protection 870: The 12.5-Inch Short-Barreled US Marshals Shotgun. ago. It will be noted from above that the physical distance between the muzzle of the test shotgun and the paper targets was 40 yards for the #1 buckshot (plated, pattern-controlled), 00 buckshot (unplated, buffered) and 00 buckshot (plated, pattern-controlled.) Heres how to avoid the poseurs and choose the right one. Buckshot comes in various sizes. typically don't spread as much at close . Readily-found shotgun shells tend to fall into the performance category of deformed buckshot due to a lack of plating or an effective wadding system. The rounds were shot from a Mossberg 500 12-gauge shotgun with a 20-inch barrel length and full choke. A great thing about 00 buckshot ammo is it's carried almost universally in gun shops, both physical and online. 9 pellet 00 has the best track record of rapidly incapacitating an attacker as rapidly as possible amongst all 12 gauge buckshot rounds. For self-defense indoors or in environments that physically cannot exceed 10 yards distance, we recommend #4 plated buckshot at 1250 ft/sec or higher muzzle velocity. J. Jim S. . So we set up a couple of blocks and shot it at ten feet. *Distance in feet and buckshot spread in inches. 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. Hit the link for the full article, pictures, and analysis, including the tutorial on back-boring. In apartments and houses one must always be concerned with over penetrationwho is on the other side of the wall. Price: $8.49 per 10-rnd. 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. The suddenness of the event will degrade any shooters accuracy and the hit probability of a single projectile weapon will be correspondingly low. Thus, Id try to keep shots within 30 yards. No point in hitting him with a few more pellets if none of them have the juice to keep going and kill whatever you are shooting at. It seems that in the oldest question of weight vs. number, 00 buckshot has been the drawn line in the sand. I did some shooting with Royal #4 buckshot. You can hit more, and each pellet will do less, to the terminal end of losing its effectiveness at all. The Remington hand gun ballistic data for a standard velocity 158 grain .38 special bullet shows 200 foot pounds at the muzzle from 4" barrel. Even in the narrow confines of 00 buckshot, . At our distances this would mean: From the onset, lets put this standard into perspective. What round do you prefer? First, we will try the Hornady Buckshot at 12 yards with the smooth bore. 4. That the 1 inch of spread for every yard rule has pretty much been busted. Grandpa used to tell me that buckshot spreads 1 for every yard from gun. Brass Fetcher Ballistic Testing recently conducted an eye-opening ballistic gelatin test of buckshot at 50 yards distance. Determination of hit probability (past the 40 yard distance that was physically tested at) was based upon the average mean radius of the tested 10 shotshell/10 target test groups. Using a cylinder-bore shotgun, we discovered when shooting beyond 20 yards at least one pellet will likely miss a human-size target. JOHN: Well, they dont pattern with anything and thats the thing I kind of wonder if most of peoples opinion on shotguns are based off of one shotgun they had that they did this one thing with and then never did anything else. Great post. 2. To many pellets can ruin the effectiveness of the ones you hit with. Shotguns are well known for their ability to increase hit probability and to deliver what is commonly believed to be devastating terminal effectiveness at close range. An example of this analysis can be found below for the #1 buckshot deformed sphere: On closer inspection of the zoomed-in portion of Figure 8a and b, we see that a #1 buckshot deformed sphere can be expected to penetrate to 12.0 of gelatin at a velocity of 993 ft/sec. At 25 yards, birdshot has decreased in effectiveness by a wide margin. The buffered, extra-hard buckshot is contained within a two-piece wad with full-length cuts made to the shotcup. So how are buckshot patterns affected by distance and barrel length? 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