Rocksalt loads- rural legend or real?

Dunno if it's true or not, but it even got a mention in Kill Bill vol.2.

My brother was shot with rock salt while raiding an ole mans watermelon patch a good 35yrs ago. Our Grandmother was the one that had to pick the salt out. Also, dont go take a shower right after, tends to sting...lol

-Variable

I grew up in Detroit about two blocks from a set of rail road tracks about nine tracks wide. Its where most of the tracks comming into Detroit would merge and head into Detriot Central II RR station and most of the major freight loading points for factories and warehouses.
Theft was a huge problem in the area. Trains would get broken into on a regular basis.
The biggest fear we had as kids was not being hit by a train when crossing the tracks but running into a rail cop with the legendary ROCK SALT shotgun .
Of course there was always someone telling tales about being shot at but I never saw it first hand.
I doubt they could use it today (if it ever existed). Theres too many people out there that would sue the pants off anyone using it because, of course, their kids are littel angles and would never deserve to be shot at for stealing from a train.

I can tell you this. My father was the most honest person I've ever known, and he said that he'd been shot with rock-salt once and shot at on another occasion. The first was while stealing food from a garden around 1933. The other occasion was when he and some friends were throwing rocks at passing boxcars a couple years later.

I'd bet that at one time it was not terribly uncommon. However, I'd be amazed at it happening anytime in the last 30 years or so, due to litigation issues.

I've never been shot at with rock salt.

I've never shot at a person with rock salt.

I've shot many a nosy neighbors dog with rock salt, and milo, and popcorn, and airsoft bb's.

Smoke (and I'm pretty rural)

You know how them itty bitty pellets from dove loads sound as they are "raining down amongst you" whilst dove hunting? ...Rock Salt is kinda like that -

Makes the mellon tastes better though.

I for some reason am burned out with watemelon. Cantelope and Honeydew no problem....I wonder if there "might" be a correlation?

kudu -
Surprised me when he mentioned using popcorn kernals to rid the barn of pigeons here while back. Yep it works very well, and a whole lot easier to reload than rock salt....pattern better too...

huff....puff...huff...jump the fence....huff....puff...whew..."crack" [ sound of watermelon breaking on the ground]....slurp...sticky....grinning...wiping hand on jeans...



I was destined to run Cross Country later in life...I just didn't know I was training for it at the time...when that blank pistol fired - I was OFF that line let me tell you. Logs , fences , creeks...hey no problem....this seems familar...

On those rare times I ran Relays ....I never dropped the baton, and my handoff / received handoff - rock solid.

I think times have changed a bit since I was a kid...

We had an incident near here in a town named Auburn when an older man had his home broken into while he was there. He grabbed his trusty rock salt loaded 12 gauge and chased the "young man" out the front door and shot him in the back and lower regions (ass)


The perp got probation and then sued the homeowner for damages saying that he was outside the home and running away when he was shot.

Believe it or not the punk won a settlement.

I don't know about rock salt though I've heard about it all my life. I do know about rice. When I was about 9 years old (a century ago) our neighborhood had a peeping tom problem. My father opened up a couple of 12 ga shells and replaced the pellets with rice. One night about 0200 mr peeping tom visited our house. My father let loose with his rice filled shells and our neighborhood was peeping tom free from that night on.

I used to see my dad use it for deer in his garden. He just pulled the shot from a regular 12 GA low brass and reloaded it with rock salt, then recrimped them by pressing the end of the shell against the fridge. I can't imagine that it patterned very well but it still made noise and that is really all that was needed to convince the deer to cease and desist.
It should be noted that you shouldn't use this stuff in a good shotgun. He used it in an old single barrel that was worth about $30 new, and it had been beaten all to hell and back in the cab of a truck.
Think about it. You are sandblasting your barrel with salt. Not a good way to keep your shotgun in perfect condition.

My Uncle used to load up shells with rocksalt and mustard seed for all those stray dogs city people used to drop off. They usually went feral pretty quickly and would knock over trash cans or pester the chickens.

I've seen 12 ga. rounds loaded with rocksalt for sale at the local gun shows from the folks selling 'dragons breath', flechette, rubber buckshot, etc. so they do exist. Whether anyone's been dumb enough to pay around $1 a round they were asking for them is up for question...
-dc2wheel

Any sociopathic tendencies I had as a 5 year old were stopped by an old man with a shotgun and rock salt. He had caught us stealing tomatoes from his garden and warned us. We returned, and he opened up. Some caught me in the legs. I got home PDQ, told the folks and got hosed off. Pop said it served me right for stealing and then went to the man and broke his face.

The noise scared me more than the pain hurt. I thought I was dead.

Rock salt is not a good idea except when steaming crabs....

As long as I live I will never forget that episode of The Beverly Hillbillies, where Granny sees an actor playing Ulysses S. Grant, thinks it's the real Gen. Grant, and blasts him off a horse with two barrels of rock salt and ladyfingers

Granny ....yep she was something else. Elle Mae's cookies would have worked....just taken a bit longer....

Seems like Dave and I have more in common than I thought....

I didn't find out until some years later, this particular mellon patch ....sort of a rite of passage. The old boy was shooting "up and over"....the sound of a 12 bore and the load raining down supposed to teach kids something. Learned to stay low, keep eyes toward the farmhouse, run fast, jump fences and ditches.

I had a Uncle that had to have birdshot removed from his "backside". His daddy thought he was stealing mellons....NOPE . My Uncle was in town running errands, stopped to watch the blacksmith ( facinated him ) , anyway while shooing a horse somehow the loaded single shot kept handy got knocked over and discharged....pellets ricocheted , hitting my Uncle.

After the pellets were removed, ( in town the local doc checked him out) ....he got a Belt applied to his "good side" of backside. His daddy was drunk by the time he got home .

Now his daddy was not so much upset he was stealing mellons....He was upset because "the boy" had holes in the seat of them overalls, late getting home with the whiskey and the other stuff he was getting in town, and figured he might owe the local doc for services. Oh...he was supposed to back in time in time to help his momma and smaller sibs get some work done in the garden.... That Uncle had a hard time growing up being the eldest and all...with a daddy like that...



Took a few days for a neighbor to verify his story...living out in the country , news didn't always travel fast.

What is a good rock salt load? Maybe an old Lyman or Lee book has one.....

Problem with filling a thirteen year old whipper snappers rear end with rock salt for stealing nowdays is that they might turn around and shoot you in the face with a 9mm, or come back that night and burn your house down with you and your family inside for mussing their threads.

Times change...

My grandmother on my mothers side was a sweet old lady, always giving us grand kids cookies, candy, soda pop, watermelon, pocket money, but an excess of Church of Christ homilies.

But, when I was about eight, I remember finding a well oiled Winchester 12 gauge auto in one of her her closets in her home in Merkel, Texas.

Over the years, I heard a few stories about that 12 gauge auto.

Seems like my grandad had a heart attack and died under the strain of trying to support a large family during the Great Depression.

This left grandmother to raise about eight kids on a Depression era Texas farm.

Anybody that threatened her "babies", (kids or cows), was shotgun candy.

She figgered if she gave a tramp three seconds head start, and he was moving in the right direction fast, a load of birdshot up his backside wouldn't hurt him none.

She ran off a lot, never actually killed any, so I guess her theory was sound.

Even if she had, she had sufficient credit of reputation with the local deppity sherriff for her deed to be accounted under the law as righteousness.

One of the most prized possessions of my paternal Grandfather who lived on a good sized farm in Iowa was an ole (1920s) L C Smith Double Barrel 12 gauge. It was hung, upside down, on it's own rack avove the coat closet door. (In the old farm house the coat closet was just to the side of the back door.)
There were four holes bored into the face of the rack that held one 12 gauge shell each. There were two rounds of buckshot and two rounds of bird loads that had the birdshot replaced with rock salt.
The rock salt was for anyone and anything that might be unwelcome during odd hours. Dark red waxed paper hulls with low brass
The buckshot was for "other serious problems." These were Remingtons, green ribbed cardboard hullswith really high brass bases, that were so old they had a roll crimp. In my mind I can still se the 00 Buck printed on the topwad.
But what I remember most is what the old gun was kept loaded with. High brass loads with the shot replaced by dried navy beans.
Grandpa said they were used for "herding" "lost" dogs that seemed to have an devloped am unhealthy interest in chickens. It seems that the old LC Smith was choked rather tight and the odd shape of the beans gave just enough spread to get the message across without inflicting any permanent damage.

I tried this years later but found that my modified choke Mossberg just spread them all over the county. I get much better results with raw popcorn.