buckshot pattern at 50 yards

Shot recovered from 50 yard penetration test. But this is about the effective range of it, any further you are taking risks of under penetration, and vast spreads that may not hit anything, at least effectively. Loaded with our Power-Piston one-piece wad for consistent patterns. Coming from a slugs only state I have shot plenty of deer with shotguns but none with buckshot. This brings me to the next target zone, the neck. If you fire at the head, half of the pattern will also be covering the spine and neck. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. In fact, the widest group fired, using the Vang-Comp-modified Remington 870, measured only 22 inches at 105 feet. The stuff is a poor performer past about 20-25 yards. In apartments and houses one must always be concerned with over penetrationwho is on the other side of the wall. The deepest penetrating Dead Coyote pellets were the ones that remained whole. All of these shotguns are excellent in my opinion, and Ive pointed both brands at more than a few criminals in my law enforcement career. If I take an 18-inch circle and put it centered on a deers head, most of the pattern doesnt cover anything vital. Chris Baker Shotguns are typically considered close-range firearms, especially when loaded with buckshot. Living in southern Michigan, where we use shotguns and muzzleloaders for deer. A Packable Lever Action: The Chiappa 1892 Alaskan Takedown, Think First, Shoot Second: A Pistol Drill to Mess With Your Head. Most stock barrels were less than .5 per yard. The two different theories are quite different, and to be honest, both take deer every year. This is a relatively large pellet, measuring just .33 inches in diameter. if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'guntradition_com-leader-2','ezslot_6',119,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-guntradition_com-leader-2-0');if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'guntradition_com-leader-2','ezslot_7',119,'0','1'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-guntradition_com-leader-2-0_1');.leader-2-multi-119{border:none!important;display:block!important;float:none!important;line-height:0;margin-bottom:7px!important;margin-left:auto!important;margin-right:auto!important;margin-top:7px!important;max-width:100%!important;min-height:250px;padding:0;text-align:center!important}Buckshot hunters come in two primary categories. 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. GDubya Registered Joined Mar 25, 2010 1,630 Posts The 00 buckshot (unplated, buffered) load impacted the targets with greater than 50% of the shot pellets at least 50% of the time. Is it easy to get an internship at Microsoft? Shooting again at 25 yards, the 18-inch-barreled 500 created a 6.5-inch pattern while the 14-inch-barreled 590A1 produced a 14-inch pattern. CHRIS: Right, so were looking for 12-18 of penetration in ballistic gelatin. Federal Flite-Control 00 Buck-though that's designed as an anti-personnel load for out to 50 yards through riot guns. Wow! TSS #4, Kicks GT .670, 50 yards . And its nasty at close range. Much better than aiming at the head. but you may find then woefully lacking further . What's the Maximum Effective Range of Buckshot? (Again this pattern with with the 18.5" Benelli with the IC choke) Attached File CHRIS: If its the only we could come up with some scenario where it makes sense but its going to be pretty rare. At 25 yards, figure a decent barrel will "pattern" around 30" which is larger than the average human. A load the Brits developed years ago. Of course, do you want to use a shotgun beyond 25 yards? Having a hit probability greater than chance (greater than 50% of pellets make scoreable hits on target). Shooting again at 25 yards, the 18-inch-barreled 500 created a 6.5-inch pattern while the 14-inch-barreled 590A1 produced a 14-inch pattern. My "comfort zone" is 20-35 yards, but I have dropped several past 35 yards. 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. Perhapse I can improve. I retired as Editor in Chief in 2017. JOHN: Would you still be hitting stuff at that distance? Believe it or not, there is a fairly good way to measure the killing power of a bullet. Which of the two theories is proper? It doesnt have the energy or penetration to break the spine past that point either. It made a 33 inch pattern. JOHN: Yeah. JOHN: Well, we were talking about it and what we wanted to know was, how far out can we take buckshot and still have it pass the FBI heavy clothing terminal ballistics standard? So, thats what we did. Out of my M2 w/ light mod. The remaining shotshells were shot at 40 yards distance. That leaves Federals Vital-Shok buck, which uses Federals FliteControl wad, as the tightest-patterning buckshot load Im aware of, and it performs in almost any choke so long as its not of the ported or wad-stripping variety. You probably already knew that. I have and do use 3" magnum 00 buck but have no brand preference. If you are shooting No.3 or No.4 buckshot, you should keep it under 30 yards. The results chart is telling: Hit the link for the full article, pictures, and analysis, including the tutorial on back-boring. What does all this show us? Big pellets dont always follow the same rules that apply to smaller shot. The #1 was starting to fail the FBI test it was starting to be underneath the 12-inch penetration. One issue is that no one uses a full choke on a defensive shotgun, IC is the tightest that is practical for defensive use. The buffered, extra-hard buckshot is contained within a two-piece wad with full-length cuts made to the shotcup. For instance, loads of 12-gauge 00 buck are commonly available in 8 to 18 pellets depending on the lengths from 2 3/4 to 3 1/2. Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. Posted December 6, 2008. 8 pellet Flite Control will run patterns the size of your fist at 25 yards. This was to ensure that all shot pellets struck the paper and could be accounted for in the further range calculation. 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. Up until then, they produced great patterns. Size, penetration, and energy all make buckshot more lethal than birdshot. #1 buckshot is likely the optimal load for self-defense with a shotgun. Thats how animals run off wounded, never to be found. All between 35 and 60 yards. This is a little thing we like to call Stuff John and Chris Wanna Know. So John, tell us, what do we want to know today? Rios Game Load C20 (20 ga 2 3/4 00 Buck) has rather optimistic ballistics. Will buckshot kill at 50 yards? Those nine .33-caliber pellets can have serious impact on a human target, and that effectiveness only improves from 75 feet and in. Am also testing my buckshot patterns. We headed out to the range to find out with three representative shotguns. Keep Reading. One time only I tried fifteen .310 roundballs in my Bess, and banged away at 50 yards. The single buckshot pellets were acquired from shotshells shot from a SAAMI 12 gauge test barrel (24 length, cylinder bore) into a cotton soft-catch box (Figure 1) and were then handloaded and shot into gelatin from low-pressure handgun cartridges (Figures 2, 3, and 4) at a wide range of velocities. All that John Shaft, shoot-from-the-hip, Hollywood crap is just thatcrap. The rounds were shot from a Mossberg 500 12-gauge shotgun with a 20-inch barrel length and full choke. The factory shotshells provide a baseline with which to compare the results achieved with the single buckshot pellets shot into gelatin as a verification of the acceptability of simulating long-range hits with single buckshot pellets shot at reduced velocity. Regular reader Jim in NC recently suggested I write more about buckshot, adding that I should not dismiss buckshot deer hunters as a bunch of knuckle dragging rednecks who should be shooting driven pheasants with Holland and Hollands. Hardly. and 9/10 are inside a 20" circle. One pellet that disrupts either the brain or the spine will bring your deer down on the spot. But, I have always been intrigued by buck shot and have a shot a bunch at paper to see how it acts. The pattern generally opens up pretty quickly. As such, we recommend #4 buckshot for self-defense only if using plated and heavily-buffered shotshells and the anticipated range of engagement does not exceed 10 yards. When I began deer hunting we ran deer with dogs and used only shot guns with buck shot. RE: Buckshot for deer. Although he misses the bad guy with his shot, he hits a sign that falls down and whacks the guy. Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors. Some brands and lines of ammo are significantly better than others and that affects the pattern a lot as well.Aiming for the front corner ofthe shoulder gives a good spread and limits skull damage. The more sectional density, the better it will retain energy and the deeper it will penetrate. Out to 50, you are still lethal, youre still getting the majority of the pellets onto someone, if thats what youre shooting at, but youre starting to lose ones off of the target which, depending on what youve got going on, is a problem. From a distance of about 8 feet, the double-barreled shotgun blows pie-pan-sized holes through the wall, cutting down his adversary. Its 18 g/cc density hits gobblers harder and patterns better than lead or bismuth, ensuring cleaner kills at reasonable distances. 12 and 20 gauge hollow point slugs Slug pros: Lethal at longer distances: Buckshot is ideal for shots inside 25 yards, 50 at a stretch with appropriate shot+choke+shooter combo. Thats our control, thats what we do with our handgun ammo. For the purposes of this report, the definition of buckshot is broken out into two categories: deformed and spherical. The procedure I fired one round of each load from each of the three different choke tubes. As you can see, it made a 27 inch spread. Premium, buffered loads of hard pellets are worth the price you pay for them for shooting at longer ranges (40 yards). I will go ahead and order a Cylinder choke from Briley and try it out, as much as I grit my teeth at the idea. The target was a large piece of paper at a range of 30 yards. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Buckshot patterns fall apart quickly. CHRIS: I guess the big thing is that context is really important and shotguns can do a lot of different things depending on what hardware youre using and what ammo youre using. There isnt much out there in 000 buckshot, its never really been popular. By Home Ammunition How Does Buckshot Perform at 50 Yards? Theres so much misinformation, it doesnt seem to want to go away. The pattern is youre accountable for every single round in that pattern onto a man-sized target, easily. If you can guarantee ranges shorter than this for your situation, the shotgun should be the first choice. My last deer was shot with 2w Winchester 00 buckshot. The Benelli uses a .728" bore, IIRC (which is pretty narrow) and so ANY constriction may be fouling things. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". Because they have a poor sectional density, they shed their energy fast, both in the air and in the target.For close shots, aim for the shoulder, straight up the leg to hit the heart and lungs. It was necessary to determine the velocity of the buckshot spheres as they traveled downrange to know the maximum range at which the pellet would be able to meet the 12.0 minimum penetration depth in ballistic gelatin. I tried several buckshot tubes with regular wadding buckshot, patterns were acceptable to 50 yards. Ive heard heated arguments for all three. If you aim at the lungs, you stand a chance of taking out the spine with the top of your pattern, which would be nice. Lets take each premise and take it to the extreme, just to see if the idea, in general, makes sense. Enter to WIN the Smith & Wesson and Black Hills package. If you dont have a clear shot, dont take it. What happens to atoms during chemical reaction? So how are buckshot patterns affected by distance and barrel length? Thornton takes Mississippi to The Swede, where he buys a sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun as a holstered sidearm. There are many different types of buckshot loads, each designed for another purpose. GENERALY no one should need a very long shot inside their home or apartment. Thank for the info in advance. It has been proven over and over it can be easily taken away and disarm the owner Why do you think SWAT and other such entry teams use short barreled firearms when entering and clearing a building? Given that the analysis done for this report focuses on the lethality/hit probability of the individual shot pellet in the shot cloud, it was necessary to determine how suitably the single-launched buckshot represents the terminal performance of each individual shot pellet expelled from a shotshell. The Boar Blaster seemed to corral enough of the pellets and put them into the vitals to be a worthwhile buckshot choke option. At 50 yards you need slugs, or better yet a rifle. Each ball is delivering about the equivalent of a .36 C&B revolver. They offer the advantage of tremendous stopping power. 2-inch #00 buckshot comes with either 8 or 9 pellets. For the longer shots, #4 buck will kill way out there. So, that was kinda interesting. There will be about a 3-inch circle in the front of the shoulder that is non-lethal, the shoulder ball joint. Back before the days of screw in chokes we deer hunted brair patches and cedar thickets with with hounds and shotguns. The most common, and arguably the best buckshot for deer is 12-gauge 00 buckshot in a 2 inch shell. The pellets are clustered together more than conventional wad buckshot when they reach the choke, and they are compressed against each other leading to increased deformation. The shots were taken as a baseline at the FBI standard distance of 10 feet between muzzle and gelatin block. No.4 to No.1 buckshot are best on a more forward target, where a hit to the spinal cord or brain is likely. This is generally loaded with nine of the 33 caliber lead balls to go about 1,250 feet per second. June 2, 2010 in Shotgun - Technical. JOHN: Right. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. This shotgun includes a SureFire forearm, a BlackHawk Knoxx Stock and a three-point sling. Big, fast, and mean, they keep their energy and danger quite a ways. We loaded up with Federal 12-gauge 2 3/4-inch magnum 00 Buck with a muzzle velocity of 1,290 feet-per-second and Winchester 2 3/4-inch high-velocity steel BB shot with a muzzle velocity of 1,550. If you are shooting No.3 or No.4 buckshot, you should keep it under 30 yards. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. During my decade at TFB I was fortunate to work with the most amazing talented writers and genuinely good people. Upload or insert images from URL. Beyond about 30 to 50 yards, the spread from most shotguns becomes too unpredictable to reliably guarantee that any of the pellets will hit the intended target. Generally 00 buck will open up about 1 per yard traveled with a cylinder bore 12 gauge. Were doing something a little different today. I thought I posted this before, but here's some shotgun patterns out of a Remington 870 with an 18.5" barrel. Jordan enjoys giving his time and resources to help others and has spent 15 years volunteering in a boy's mentoring program He is and will always be an American Patriot. Published Oct 10, 2019 5:15 PM. I'm sure it depends heavily on the load, but the tests in the video were performed with a full-choked shotgun (a Mossberg 500) to give the test the best odds. The more pellets, the greater chance of a killing shot. The next test platform was a Mossberg 500 with an 18-inch barrel and bead sights. By clicking Accept All, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. Times have changed since then.3. I am sure many dead deer would argue that yes buckshot is lethal at 50 yards. Either one sounds like it would work well enough. But why does more penetration of a few outweigh less penetration of many? JOHN: Yeah, and the whole point of what did we want to know was just, flat out, not is it appropriate to shoot this distance not anything other than what does it do?. For defense against people my max range with 00 buck is 15 yards and slugs 35-50 yards. Buckshot pellets are significantly larger than birdshot. probably about 10% so a 25 yard pattern would be about 27.5". The suddenness of the event will degrade any shooters accuracy and the hit probability of a single projectile weapon will be correspondingly low. I aimed at the lungs, just behind the shoulder. Powdercoat does help in groupings. Now let's look at the 60 yard penetration test. What would the range be for 00 buckshot with a Rem 870 mod choke? It just performs too erratically past 25 yards for me to consider. He has earned black belts in four martial arts and is a certified Krav Maga instructor. #4 will have around 21 to 28 pellets. Some folks call them hermaphrodites while others swear that they're antlered does. you have more of gradual taper on the inside of the choke, also known as the "skirt", because the taper looks like a skirt. I tried laying the buckshot in pairs in 3 stacks and the patterns were . Buckshot will kill you at 100 yards. And the other thing, too keep in mind the forward-facing area of those was like, what, 5x6, something like that? It's better at 25 yards, maybe 3 or 4 balls out of 9. Here it might be better to use a slug. It has the best practical range of any hollowpoint weapon for deer hunting: about 70 yards. 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. Because I was getting junk patterns even with an IC constriction, I just wrote the stuff off. Most of us used No. Powered by Invision Community. 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. I think thats pretty safe to say. Table of TSS shot 60 yard penetration test data The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". I selected the distances of 12, 30, 50, 60 and 75 feet for the test, as these run the gamut from close range to the maximum distance a standard 12-gauge smoothbore might perform. I noted exactly what you did. JOHN: So for me, I guess the big takeaway was that inside of 25, the shotgun is devastating. Yes I have slugs readily available as well. So IF my pellets had sufficient penetration, I'd say this pattern would be OK for deer hunting. It's all about the pattern when it gets to that 50 yards that counts. Still, at least half of your pattern area is missing the animal. I stopped using the stuff when I found cheaper shells did much better. You cannot take a shot that isnt clear. It is my best-patterning choke with 00 Buck. [Part 2], Why Wont the Ruger Mini-14 Just Die? Click on the picture to be taken to the Rifleshooter article. I was discouraged by the results, which prompted me to head back out and pattern test both shotguns with a small variety of ammo on hand.----- I used two guns for testing. BrianEnos.com Technically, if you combined the penetration of all the pellets in a load of No.4 buckshot and compared it to the combined penetration of 00 buckshot, the No.4 buckshot wins hands down. All ballistic gelatin blocks (Figure 7) used in this evaluation were nominal 10% ballistic gelatin blocks calibrated in accordance with FBI RFP-OSCU-DSU1401 as follows (FBI RFP-OSCU-DSU1401, page 95, 2014): "Prior to the utilization of any block of gelatin, validation of the block will be tested to assure consistency of the gelatin mixture. Cameron had an extra full Primos (IIRC) turkey choke that absolutely threw an awesome pattern (100%, 16-18" @ 50 yards) with Remington 000, the cheap stuff. The #4 would be something for walking in the dark using it as a defensive shell i. I have owned several and none would keep the pellets on a 12x20" target past about 20 yards or so. Dispersion of buckshot pattern with distance. But TSS has also given some hunters a false sense of how far they can kill a longbeard. With flush chokes, the taper is more pronounced creating less accuracy. If your shots are mostly at 25 or 50 yards, you should consider either a modified choke or full choke tube with smaller shot sizes like #6 or #8 instead of buckshot. 00 Wolf 12 Gauge Ammo 2 3/4" 00 Power Buckshot 9 Pellets Our Price: $6 (WYMT) - Pikeville Medical Center's Leonard Lawson Cancer Center is expanding after an announcement by Congressman Hal Rogers and Gov The shotgun barrel patterned very well using buckshot , birdshot, and the Winchester PDX1 ammunition 12 Gauge Remington Magnum Buckshot .