.410 ga Buckshot vs 12 ga Buckshot?

I feel well armed.............

.............with my .410 in the corner. Even more so since it's a Kushnapupped Saiga with a 10 round mag in it and two more on deck.

I reload my own 3 in .410 shells with 5 pellets of 00 buckshot. All five pellets hit within a paper plate at 25 yards out of my Mossberg 500.

A pawn shop I occasionally wander through had for a couple of years an AR15 upper in .410. No Joke. I thought about when it got down to about $300 but would you believe that when I ask to see it the shop guy that I have spoken with there and at shows talked me out of even looking at it to see how it worked. He said he was afraid I might buy it and he would feel bad about tossing it off on me at any price.

I told him when it got to a Dollar three eighty to toss away but someone else bought it a month later.

I keep a couple of sleeves of .410 buck and one of slugs in my visitor box along with some Number sixes almost old enough to have roman numerals on them. One sleeve of the buck and about as many # 6 are shorties. I keep an ammo box holding a few rounds for all I have and various amounts of ammo for guns I do not have in case I have a guest that needs ammo for something I would not normally have. There is even a stripper clip with a few rounds in it for a 6.5 Carcano in that box. Ya never know when someone may drop by and have something you never shot.

-kBob

In the long run what is the combined weight in grains and the resulting total muzzle energy of the shot pellets hitting the target at the same time of a 12 guage (with more pellets for a given pellet size) vs a .410 guage.

I would think a 12 guage is significantly more powerful. Now the question is, is a .410 good or more than good enough and at what ranges.

Energy doesn't matter. What matters is how many wound channels there are, how deep they are, how large they are, and if they hit anything vital.

But no matter how you measure, the 410 will be about half what the 12 is because pellet count is half. Their velocities are similar, so that kind of factors out. But the 410 recoil will also be less.

We could all shoot a cannon with grape shot for the most efficacy, but we all have limits as to what we can handle (or want to handle). Especially as we age...

The 5 000 buck pellets have to line up to get out of the .410 barrel, and the 9 00 buck pellets can make it out 3 at a time from a 12 ga. barrel.

Those pellets in .410 are already lined up then they exit through a full choke in most cases, so they chew a nice deep hole until you stretch the range out. 12 bore is still better, but .410 can do the job out of a full size shotgun.

If the 410 shotgun (it was a Mossberg 500) I had seen at Dicks Sporting goods hadn't been scratched up, I would have bought it. I had taken my 12 gauge Mossberg 590 though Loui Awebuck's class and I wanted to retake this class with that 410 just to see how it did. Mostly wanted it so that when my daughter was a wee bit older it would be a good initial training pump to shoot tin cans. Of course, this assumed recoil was dimished from my 12 gauge. The 410 was smaller and lighter so recoil may not be as reduced as I would have hoped. It did look like a cute little shotgun.

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To sidestep a moment for this:
Using standard 2-1/2" target loads (or reloads) the recoil will be slight, but what matters if how well the gun fits her - and there is more to it than just cutting the stock down.

In the long run what is the combined weight in grains and the resulting total muzzle energy of the shot pellets hitting the target at the same time of a 12 guage (with more pellets for a given pellet size) vs a .410 guage.

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Somewhat, but the pellets do not hit at the same time - being hit by a one pound brick hurts more than 1 pound of sand with all other factors being equal.

gp911 said:

Those pellets in .410 are already lined up then they exit through a full choke in most cases, so they chew a nice deep hole until you stretch the range out. 12 bore is still better, but .410 can do the job out of a full size shotgun.

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It was a joke, gp911.

Actually, oneounceload, wouldn't a comparison between a brick and driveway or pea gravel be closer? Sand would be more like 12 shot.

The big thing with buckshot is to get as many pellets hitting the target as possible, having more buckshot in a round makes the chances better plus the added benefit of all 9 hitting

Dave McC used to handload his own low recoil 12 ga loads with IIRC 6 00 buckshot pellets.

Wife has an 18" bbl Taurus Circuit Judge for home defense, loaded with Federal Premium 000 buck (4 pellets). She shoots it well, there's very little recoil, and she's confident with it.