Hodgdon Longshot for shotgun

So I’ve been looking at the ballistics of Longshot for some time. The other day I loaded a couple boxes of 1 1/4 oz 12 gauge. Per loaddata.com the velocity was 1385 and the pressure was only 7,200 PSI. Kinda why I’m intrigued with Longshot.

I also saw the next load, 1 more grain was 1440 fps and pressure was safely at 9,200 PSI.

Thought I’d load a few of those and see if the guns could tell the difference. They statically couldn’t.

Both the barrel with a factory modified and the other barrel with the light modified choke in, couldn’t tell the difference between the 2 loads in this small sample size.

The Improved Modified was 162 pellets versus 160 with the hotter load. The factory modified was 183 versus 179 pellets. Guess the extra 65 fps isn’t costing me anything.
But what I found very interesting was the old (1981) barrel that has probably had 10,000 steel shot shells and several 100 Hevi-shot loads and literally 50,000 lead loads through it held a tighter pattern than a brand new Improved Modified choke did in the other barrel. My new A5 didn’t like either load so I didn’t post pics of that mess.

I hunt both California and Nevada for chukar 20-40 times a year. In California non-toxic in required. Last year I set a vest up for each state with bismuth for California. I also had a California gun and a Nevada gun. Nevada doesn’t require a plug for upland. That didn’t work out well since the A5 safety is behind the trigger and the B80 is in front. Screwed up numerous covey flushes pushing the wrong safety off.

One of my B80s was out of commission last year because the barrel had a bulge in it. Now that’s remedied with a new, used barrel. So looks like the old barrel will be on my Nevada gun and shoot lead outta it. I’ll play with the different chokes with bismuth on the other gun.

Save the A5 strictly for waterfowl.

I recently load 4 boxes of 1 1/8 is #7s with WSF. I used to shoot #7s of the first shot, especially early season. The only drawback was too many pellets in the bird. But after the way I shot the last 2 seasons, too many beats not enough.

But my 11 weeks straight shooting skeet and a few Sporting Clays courses have hopefully remedied that issue.

I am going to do some 1 3/8 oz #5s for 3rd and 4th shots with Longshot. When I’ve been frustrated with wild jumping birds I have been known to stack 4 of those in the gun. Almost a guarantee that I’ll get a staggered covey rise at point blank distance.

A guy I shoot skeet with every week told me he also loaded a 1 1/8 oz load with Longshot. He loved the velocity but he said it made his gun hotter than any other powder he’d tried.

That’s not a concern of mine since I’m using it for a hunting load.