buckshot vs buckshot

I usually go with 00. I would imagine whomever was on the receiving end wouldn't know the difference between 0-4.

00 seems to pattern fine out of my 590 20". My hallway is about 18' long. The length from the top of my stairs to my foyer is maybe 20'. These are the ranges I'll be shooting this gun at, God forbid. Anything taking a hit at those distances is going to be having a bad/last day.

labnoti said:

The size of the pattern is illustrated with the scale given. It was about a 7cm pattern. Practically speaking, the entire pattern hit a gel block, and we can be fairly certain nobody made a gigantic block of gel for no apparent reason. Also, Dr. Fackler's "wound profile" illustrations are just that and not photographs because they are intended to be representative of the repeatable results of many tests with the specified criteria.

The purpose of the illustration isn't to indicate that selecting #4 Buckshot will result in inadequate penetration. The purpose is to show that there are other factors that affect performance and they are only ignored to our peril. In essence, what Fackler was illustrating here was "how to make #4 Buckshot fail." Does it always fail? Certainly not. But just because a person selects #4, or any other shot size, does not mean they've selected an effective load.

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That was kind of the point I was trying to make. I'm comfortable with #3 out of a 20 ga at 12' (inside house) and not so much at 120' in Police Enforcement.

The correct ammo for one is not necessarily the correct ammo for the other.

#3 at 12 feet doesn't itself describe an effective load or circumstances for such a load. Just like with handgun bullets where the velocity and bullet construction have a big impact on terminal performance, so it does with buck shot. We would never just say because I loaded my handgun with .355" bullets that it will be effective at 12 feet.

If a load of #3 is unplated, unbuffered, a soft alloy, shot through a tight choke, with a poor wad/shotcup design, and is pushed to supersonic velocities, it could probably be made to fail standard tests at 12'.

00's main advantage compared to #1 or #3 or #4 is it carries momentum to a little longer range, but those ranges are atypical of home defense, and because of the high-drag of round shot, the return is highly diminishing. The reason 00 is at a disadvantage is it crushes less tissue. In Gus Cotey Jr's article, already mentioned, he calculated 9 pellets of 00 to crush about 65 cc's of tissue in 12" of penetration. The same weight payload of #1 would crush 95.6cc of tissue in that same distance. That's 46% more. This is theoretical, but the difference is certainly big enough to likely be meaningful. To optimize buckshot, it's a matter of using the available features to maximize penetration for any given shot size, and then finding the smallest shot size that will penetrate "enough." We give up performance if we use shot lacking features so that poor penetration results, and we give up performance when we use larger shot sizes to make up for poor penetration-per-diameter.

Read through each post and can bet that not one of the folks on this thread have actually used a shotgun when it's all on the line - and you're scared spit-less....

Down here in paradise (south Florida) the rangemasters at the range that almost every department trained at in Dade county did a bit of testing with buckshot (basic 00buck, 2 3/4" rounds) fired out of standard riot guns (18" barrels, improved cylinder chokes). All of this was long before the much improved flight control rounds were ever on the market, and a 12ga. was standard equipment in almost every patrol car. It was pretty reliably proven that with those beat up old shotguns, 00buck would disperse at the rate of one inch per yard from the muzzle... (a 3" pattern at nine feet, a 7" pattern at twenty one feet, etc.) - this directly contradicts that nice chart shown in post #5.... The test itself was very simple and easily replicated with paper squares placed directly in line spaced out at 3, 7, and 15 yards... Each round was sent downrange at exactly the same height so that it clearly marked on paper the pattern spread at each distance during flight...

Argue all you want about penetration, pattern dispersion, wounding effectiveness... I can tell you from experience that a single shot from the above described weapons with basic 00buck is a one shot fight ender if you do your part and your target is within 15 meters.. At the 15 meters range (roughly a bit more than forty five feet) a center of mass impact on an adult will have all nine pellets where you want them - and at closer ranges you'd better be aiming since the pattern will be a lot smaller, the closer in your target is... The penetration on target will be roughly 18", enough to get the job done - but also enough that you'd better be careful where you're shooting inside a structure...

That's it in a nutshell. In the years since I retired out of police work (1995 for me) shotguns in patrol vehicles have almost disappeared in favor of some kind of carbine... but at close quarters it's still a one shot fight ender....

Interesting article from Box O' Truth on testing the Federal Flight Control shells with #1 buck. The pictures indicate they seemed to hold together in a tight group out to long shotgun distances.

https://www.theboxotruth.com/the-box-o-truth-56-federal-flight-control-1-buckshot/

I'll add this: Tests of various size buckshot as far as penetration through drywall. All tested passed through at least 7 boards situated close together. So much for #4 being safer in a house.

When they spread them out to approx. room size, they still went through 4 sheets. We must be very careful about who or what is on the other side before we pull the trigger in a house.

Here's the test: https://www.theboxotruth.com/the-box-o-truth-3-the-shotgun-meets-the-box-o-truth/

#1 Buck is my choice. hdbiker

lemaymiami said:

.... at close quarters it's still a one shot fight ender....

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It didn't stop the fight in Newhall. It didn't stop the fight in Miami. It didn't stop the fight in North Hollywood.

There were multiple shots under 10 yards in those incidents.

I was working on the street the day of that sad FBI shootout in Miami. The City I worked for was almost 30 miles to the north...

You’ll note that an accurate account of what occurred that day did not start out with a solid center of mass hit with anything- much less a solid hit with 00buck... Had that happened the outcome would have been a lot different. Lord knows that all of our weapons trainers and officer survival trainers went over and over that incident as part of their teachings. A few years after that I was in charge of training for my 100 man outfit (although we were authorized 100 we rarely had more than 95 sworn on board). Our trainers put together an outstanding officer survival course and I believe to this day that it saved lives and greatly reduced the number of our shooting incidents in the following years.

That's right. Out of those three incidents, the only "solid hit" was in North Hollywood on body armor that resulted in no effect at all. 00 Buck is stopped decisively by even cheap hard plates. In Miami, Ed Mireles did fire 5 cartridges of 00 Buck but only succeeded in wounding Platt in the feet with them. The range of this gunfight was extremely close. Did the cars render 00 Buck ineffective or was it too hard to put the shot on target? Either way, five rounds of 00 buckshot didn't stop the fight. In Newhall, Michael Alleyn emptied his 870 (4 rounds of 00 buckshot, the other 1 was ejected live) at Twinning and Davis, and succeeded only in hitting Twinning in the forehead with 1 pellet which Twinning later said, "hurt like hell." They were only about 30 feet apart. Davis returned fire with a sawed-off Montgomery Ward's 12 gauge and killed Alleyn with 00 buck. In this case, 00 buck didn't end the fight for Alleyn the way he would have wanted.

I've found LeMayMiami's posts personally interesting as my LE career started ~1995 and I recently fully retired in 2017.
Throughout my career, for shotguns, we used 1 oz. rifled slugs in 2.75" 12 gauge from Winchester or Remington; and 00 buck, "SuperX" Winchester, again 12 gauge 2.75".

My prior department recently switched to the low recoil Federal 12 gauge 2.75", but still 00 buck, now with the Flight Control Wad, and the low recoil 1 oz. slug. There was some talk on Winchester's observed/perceived quality not being as good causing the switching to Federal, but this may have been more in the handgun ammo (Winchester RA9B to Federal HST, both in 147 grain) and not as much in the long-gun ammo. During my time there, the shotgun changed from a 20" Mossberg 590A1, first with bead sight, then to ghost ring sights, finally to a 14" Mossberg 590A1 with ghost ring sights.

For the now-older Colt AR15 guns, the department also switched ammo brands to Federal, but with a .223 62 grain soft point. Every officer didn't just get a rifle. Each LEO had to personally make a request to get the training class and be issued a rifle. I'm estimating maybe 1/3 of the 500 LEOs requested and got the training to carry an issued AR15 (firearms generally must be issued, no personally-owned, optional BUGs excepted).

I was never involved with what ammo was to be issued/approved/tested. Now retired, I'm still used to 00 buck and slugs, but would consider these other buckshot choices if I had to but 00 buck in various brands, all 12 gauge 2.75", always seems readily available online. I've got a good feel at estimating distance out to ~20 yards where I'll be switching to slugs (even with 00 buck with "Flight Control" wads) as each of the 8 or 9 pellets should not be missing the threat.

In other words, so far, I'm staying with Federal LE133 or LE132, along with 1 oz. slugs as an alternate, unless I read something which really tells me I should switch buckshot loadings. I'm only talking anti-bad-guy loadings and I've no idea what to use for anything else and what all those bird shot and other-buck-shot loadings are good for; there are just so many.

(SIDENOTE: One thing I really like is how much easier it is to clean a 12 gauge pump after the range compared to a handgun, AR15, or even my Remington 11-87P semiauto 12 gauge. I clean my gun(s) after each range session, the AR15 types being the dirtiest, most involved.)

labnoti said:

It didn't stop the fight in Newhall. It didn't stop the fight in Miami. It didn't stop the fight in North Hollywood.

There were multiple shots under 10 yards in those incidents.

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In North Hollywood the robbers wore full body armor, which deflected about everything the police could throw at them until unprotected joints could be hit.
At Newhall. Officer Frago didn't have his 870 covering Twining because Officer Frago was opening the passenger door of the Pontiac when he was fatally shot.

00 is the standard US mil issue round, I have heard that #4 is a go-to for police. What is the max distance you would be able to engage in your home? I'm thinking that unless you live in a palace or something with huge rooms and an insane amount of square footage, it won't make much difference what you use.

unless you're using a "handgun" shotgun with a 14" bbl et al. most home interior distances will net very little spread from a shotgun. I have an 18" Mossberg 930 and measuring a straight line in my house is 40 feet before there is a corner. at 40 feet my gun patterns fairly tight for a short bbl shotgun, enough so that you still have to aim it as opposed to pointing it...

JERRY said:

unless you're using a "handgun" shotgun with a 14" bbl et al. most home interior distances will net very little spread from a shotgun. I have an 18" Mossberg 930 and measuring a straight line in my house is 40 feet before there is a corner. at 40 feet my gun patterns fairly tight for a short bbl shotgun, enough so that you still have to aim it as opposed to pointing it...

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What makes you think a 14" barrelled shotgun will spread more than 18"?

SO what everyone needs to be doing instead of Yah-yahing on line is figuring out their longest in home shot, then patterning their pet load AT THAT RANGE.

When I can find it I like #1 buck as a balance between weight/diameter and shot count... because I have plenty left over from a class I have low recoil 00 in my "house gun".

If penetration is deep enough, then more holes seem "more better" to me.

My shot gun has been patterned with that school buck shot to 15 yard and is awfully close to the old FBI wisdom of every yard of range equals one inch of spread from a 18 to 20 inch cylinder bored riot gun with pre-flight control ammo.

One of the reasons I like #1 Buck is I have used it against a 10 inch gong at 75 yards and had three for three hits of at least one pellet....mind you the target frame disappeared each time in a cloud of dust as pellets dispersed over a six foot circle, but we heard the ring and saw the plate still swinging when the dust died down. Only half ( OK one out of two) of the 00 Buck rounds hit that ten inch plate. Not enough to write a paper on and publish but made me go "Hmmm"

Dr. Fackler typically listed the impact velocity as close as possible to actual impact on gel on his tests. He is unfortunately not around to ask anymore. When we discussed Governor Connelly's bullet from the JFK shooting he told of the effort he put into matching the velocity of his study bullets to likely velocities at 75 yards, through JFK and the seat back before impacting the Governor when he tried duplicating the Governors wounds and the bullet flattening in the lab. He actually used a cadaver hand (more than one I understand) for the test. BTW the bullet flatting was such that one might have mistaken Marty's bullet for LHO's.

Come to think of it Dr. Fackler was there the day I shot that ten inch gong and had a good laugh about my lack of scientific repeatability!

We had been discussing ring foil tech and considering its use in shot gun slugs.....I had a shotgun and.... things got out of hand scientifically.

If anyone is interested he made a model of a ring foil slug from I think brass or copper a guy at UF turned for him and we dropped it repeatedly from a third story breezeway to have it land front end on even when dropped backwards or on its side. If he ever got around to launching one from a shotgun, I was unaware of it. He had hoped to be able to uses a regular power piston type wad like the Lee slugs use rather than designing a special sabot.

-kBob

kBob your fourth paragraph needs some review.... believe it should read "one inch" per yard from the muzzle...

Thanks uber fisherman,

Fixed it.

Sometimes the typing fingers seem to have a mind of their own.

I still have some of the targets down in the shop on the back of the door. We had just finished doing an NRA Personal Defense class (there was but one then) and when the shooting part and cleaning part were finished, the certificates handed out and the class officially over, the students were allowed some "Free Range time"

The topic of "shotguns filling the hall with a cloud of shot" came up. Only handguns were used in the class so my Mossberg 500 GR behind the seat of my little 1/4 ton LUV was the only one on the range with its 18.5 inch barrel ( "Is that legal?" someone had to ask). I shot IPSC style card board at 3, seven and 15 yards and folks were astounded. they really expected movie performance like when a guy across a hall the short way in a movie blows a hole the size of a basket ball in a door across the way three feet or less from the muzzle.

I used the card board targets in many classes afterward to "nip it in the bud" when folks began to question why the class used handguns.

-kBob

The only thing I can add about close quarters work with a riot gun is the advice I used to give my guys (and gals) about using one when it’s all on the line... The advice was to always aim just a bit low since under severe stress (scared to death) most will shoot a bit high...

Two of the patterns from a Mossberg 590A1 with a barrel worked by Hans Vang. This is Fed H13200 at fifteen yards.

That will do it...

Gentlemen, it really is irrelevant what shot size you load for defensive in-home ranges/conditions:



Your'e running a slug gun -- through the bad guy . . . and likely the next room as well.

MEHavey said:

Gentlemen, it really is irrelevant what shot size you load for defensive in-home ranges/conditions:

View attachment 875689

Your'e running a slug gun -- through the bad guy . . . and likely the next room as well.

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With the Federal Flight Control wad - more like a frangible.




GR

large holes in the targets above is likely the wad which has already shed the majority of shot after 5 feet.

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OK, troops. Tomorrow (or weekend), it's multiple cardboard backers at 2-ft spacing.

The shot cup may be peeling back, but the shot is still effectively in a massive ball.....