Birdshot For HD?

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Please note that I have bowed out of this thread, However, since you asked, at HD ranges, the load is clumped together and the plastic cup has them all together as one wad of lead. It is not necessary to weigh a pellet. Go outside and shoot at room's distance and you will find this out for yourself.

I was born at night but not last night. I know what a shotgun blast can do at 20 feet, with any size shot, twice the size of a normal room. I refuse to act like a wannabe Commando and overdo anything. Just start shooting and shoot until the threat is over.

NOW, gents, this has gone on long enough, IMHO. I can't convince you. You can't convince me that Rambo style tactics are necessary. Lets drop it and go on to something worthwhile. Maybe someone has a gun that needs repair. Needs advice on how to put it back together. Anything but this, as it is futile to for me to add to this thread any further.

Meanwhile, me and my 20 gauge are going to cut this short and gather around the fire.

Happy shooting!!
 
Hi Odd... There are 253 #6 pellets (each weighing about 2 grains) in a standard 1 & 1/8 oz. load.

Hi EVB...

"I gracefully bow out of this thread so that the paranoia can resume."

Splendid Idea, Suh! Will be more than happy to leave this thread to the Inspector Callahans.

:cool:
 
The lethal confrontation took place in the repair shop, with the two combatants separated by less than two meters.
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Kinda key ain't it?
Six feet is so close the bird shot would tend to act as one, especially when you consider the length of the gun into it.
If you don't think so go take your 12 gauge and shoot some stuff standing 6 feet from it and see for yourself. Just take caution that it is something shot will go through and not steel plate or a concrete wall or some such.
Try a head sized cantaloupe.
 
spheres and miniballs

Considering the 00 shot.

And also that it strikes individually, rather than in a clump.

Approximately 49 grains per 32 cal. pellet would give you a sectional density of 0.07!

That limits penetration significantly.

Now, how about that bird shot?
 
Ev, rein thy choler. T'was not directed at you.

For the record, I do not want to be shot with 6 shot. I do not want to be shot with anything.

I REALLY do not want to be shot with Buckshot.

Connect the dots.....
 
"even the guy that put me at the lower end of the gene pool. I"


MOST people understood well enough the new paragraph referred to the 2 hicks with the 97's. I am offended that you disregarded my stated utmost respect for your 30 year LE experience and make a slanderous misrepresentation.However you are still a brother retired officer and I hope you don't take offence. The devil's in the details mostly.
In the group of retired officers I hunt with , with 6's and 12gas we tell each other "don't Cheney me please" when hunting in brush. When we go as reservists to an incident it's "don't kill me with cross fire" with a slug or buck!
 
I think that, had the victim used 00 buck, that most of pellets would have gone through the refridgerator door instead of stopping it. If the perpetrator was positioned such that the door of the fridge gave him cover from the other pellets, as is suggested by the fact that a few of the pellets hit him, then ammo which would perforate the fridge would likely have put him in added danger of more holes in his hide. Thus, if one of the pellets cleared the door of the fridge and hit him in the eye, even if its only effect was to blind him in that eye, some of the other pellets may have hit him lower on his face/neck/ torso and incapacitated him more effectively.

To me, this is a clear example of why to use buckshot instead of birdshot if you are using a shotgun to protect yourself -- you may not have to just hit a person, but you may have to shoot through some type of light barrier in order to do so.
 
This is only one anecdote among many.

Remember Dick Cheney's hunting buddy?

Remember the story that was posted here a few months back that dealt with an altercation between two men over the shooting of one's dog? That guy took a full blast of bird shot to the face, and they interviewed him on the news.

I've also seen more than one mug shot of an apprehended criminal with a pattern of bird shot in their face. (Granted it was in a discussion thread over at fark.com, so take that for what it's worth.)

In the realm of personal experience, I once shot a 55 gallon drum with a 20 Ga bird shot round, and was quite amazed that the shot did not even penetrate the drum, instead only denting it.

Are all of the above anecdotes? Yep. But there sure do seem to be a lot more anecdotes speaking to the anemic performance of bird shot than there are for buck shot.

Maybe all of these people who've survived bird shot wounds were just very lucky. I don't know. However, it seems to me that using buck shot or slugs would make it even less likely that the person trying to kill you will get lucky.

Pick the right tool for the job. There's nothing "Rambo" about that.
 
Are all of the above anecdotes? Yep. But there sure do seem to be a lot more anecdotes speaking to the anemic performance of bird shot than there are for buck shot.
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Indeed, a good place to see the various failures of birdshot is in the hospital. Even if you don't have a trauma unit, you will find evidence of the failure of birdshot to penetrate adequately, just by observing the incidental findings on radiographs. (An incidental finding is something that is found by chance. For example a chest X-ray is done because the patient is short of breath and multiple small shotgun pellets are seen on the radiograph. Or a vertebral arteriogram may be done and birdshot may be seen embedded in the back of the person's head).

I have seen three live acute cases of birdshot injury. Two were in South Africa and one was here in the UK. Only the close range shot was fatal (by close range, I mean that there was a rat-hole entrance wound and the shotcup was present in the wound). That patient survived a helicopter ride into town where he was picked up by ambulance and brought to our trauma unit. He survived the resuscitation process but did not survive theatre. The entrance wound was left flank and most of his abdominal organs were damaged. Penetration was acceptable, in my opinion.

The other two cases were right upper quadrant/lower right chest shots involving the liver. The first one in South Africa was an innocent bystander at a late night petrol station that got robbed. He took a shot to the abdomen and had minor liver injuries. Most of the pellets were stopped in the superficial tissues (he was a bit stocky, carrying a few extra pounds). He survived with no complications.
The last case happened here in London, where an independent pharmaceuticals salesman was shot at close range while he was seated in the car. His assailant fired from just outside the open window and the shot pattern hit the victim half on the forearm and half in the right upper quadrant of the liver. The forearm wound was bad and required extensive plastic surgery. The abdominal wound resulted in minor liver damage but the guy survived.

I have a question for those who recommend birdshot for defense:

1) Do you also support the use of Glaser ammunition instead of FMJs of the same weight for self defense (assuming that's all you could choose between)? Because to me that is the same as using birdshot in a shotgun.
 
At ten feet out of a 30" barrel bird shot will not penetrate 16 ga steel, try it yourself. If that is what you want to use then go for it. I suggest you get a semi-auto and keep pulling the trigger though.
 
For me the question has always been one of range. At close range, with direct hits, either can be fatal. Open the range out to say, 25 yards.....

I ran a series of tests several years ago for a private security firm. Using Mossberg riot guns and standard 2.75" 00 shells (11 pellets) at 25 yards, we fired 5 rounds per test on a silouette target. We fired this series 10 times.

Out of 55 pellets fired, per test, we averaged LESS THAN one hit per five rounds.

At the same range, the number of hits for #6 birdshot was substantial, but I agree that penetration would not be there.

My conclusion was simple.

Shotguns are last weapon I would use in a HD scenario. You would be better off with a .22.
 
I ran a series of tests several years ago for a private security firm. Using Mossberg riot guns and standard 2.75" 00 shells (11 pellets) at 25 yards, we fired 5 rounds per test on a silouette target. We fired this series 10 times.
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Our qualification course for the shotgun requires slugs from 50, 40, and 25 yards. Never had anyone fail to qualify on that portion. We switch to 00 buck at 20 yards and 15 yards and have had several people fail to qualify because they couldn't put enough pellets on the target. Usually it's a problem with that particular shotgun or that particular load which we have been able to fix by switching to a different load or a issuing a different gun. Bottom line, pattern your shotgun with the load you plan to use. I've had very good luck with the Federal Flight Control LE loads so far. YMMV.

I still can't help thinking, why not just use slugs? Less complicated, and unless I plan on dispersing a riot with 00, it's not any better than a hit with a slug. Hmmm....
 
tkendrick - my tests with my Mossberg were not as thorough as yours but I still came to about the same conclusion. At 25 yards it spreads pretty fast and at 40 yards you would be spraying the entire rear end of a sedan with it.
My solution was to try different loads until I found some that it liked. Which is basically any buckshot Federal loads. With those, it averages about 2-3 pellets in the 10 ring and the rest in the torso somewhere. They are almost always all on the target. I have some 3" stuff that has 15 pellets to the load so if I had to use buckshot at that range, that's what I would want to use (even with the increased recoil). More pellets is always better.
My real solution is to keep the gun loaded with Federal tactical buckshot and just keep a box of slugs close too. Shotguns are versatile so why not make use of that and choose the best load for the job?
 
Same conclusion that LAPD and many other savvy PDs have come to. AND those stray buckshot pellets seem to find innocent bystanders very well!
 
A couple of years ago a friend of mine was waling along a trail, whistling at the conclusion of a successful turkey hunt. He had the turkey slung over his left shoulder with his left hand pretty much on top of his shoulder. A old gentleman, confused as to where he was supposed to be hunting, had fallen asleep against a tree just a ways off the trail along which my friend was walking. The whistling woke him up, he said he thought he saw a flying turkey (at about 2 mph) and fired a turkey load at "it". He hit my friend in the side of the head, neck, and hand (about a dozen BBs). He walked a few feet, put everything down, and called his wife on a cell phone to get the police and an ambulance for him. Other than a few pellets that they could'nt extract due to proximity to the eye and some of the nerves of the neck, he came out OK. The old guy had his hunting license pulled permanently. Point is that even a turkey load isn't necessarily a man load. We are all just grateful that he wasn't loaded with buckshot, which it was said he did also have in possession for some reason.
 
Shotguns are versatile so why not make use of that and choose the best load for the job?
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That's just my point. They are not versatile. They are cumbersome, they have limited magazine capacity and they are slow to reload.

still can't help thinking, why not just use slugs?
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In that case, as no one seems concerned with over-penetration, then why not just use a high cap 9mm or 45?

The only valid reason for using a shotgun over a handgun or rifle in an HD situation that I have ever heard, is the concern of over-penetration.

If one is concerned about killing the neighbors sleeping child in the next apartment, or the house next door, then one is is limited to light weight bird shot. To use heavy buckshot loads in such a scenario is no better (and probably worse) than indiscriminately blasting with a high-cap rifle or pistol.

If you are not worried about over penetration, ie a rural or industrial setting, then the shotgun makes even less sense, as the range has increased to make hits questionable.

Granted, there are no "perfect" solutions, but a shotgun for HD is close to imperfect in any scenario I can think of.
 
One thing I do know about bird shot hitting you first hand is, it doesn't feel good even as it returns to earth. I was a youngster many years ago and got my dirt bike in some heavy sand on the outside of the berm at a trap range. The durn stuff was raining on me, with the sand to deep to ride in. I had to get off the bike and push it as I ran the throttle till I could get past the place. Buy the time the sand stopped me I was about half way no way to retreat except to go the way I was headed. Take my word for it it isn't the way to spend the afternoon.
BTW no helmet warm day no jacket ouch!
One of those things you only do once.

Also had some quail hunters hit me on top of my ear once, that hurts too.

My shotgun for home safty has buck shot in it.
 
"That's just my point. They are not versatile. They are cumbersome, they have limited magazine capacity and they are slow to reload."

My home defense shotgun holds 8 rounds in the magazine. I have it loaded with #1 Buck. There is no where inside my house that even approaches 25 yards range. The maximum distance I might take a shot inside my house is about 35 feet.

If I can't get the situation resolved with 8 shots of #1 Buck (plus 6 more from the carrier on the buttstock), then I probably couldn't get it resolved with any type firearm.
 
And you can't compare a 12ga. slug (or a close in buckshot load) with a 9mm or 45 handgun! I'd say a rifled slug is about 5 times as potent as a 45 and about 8 times a 9mm. In fact I have a hard time thinking of any shoulder fired weapon as devastating to humans as a slug with in 30 yards or so. I had a .358 Norma that shot 158 grain soft point pistol bullets at 3200 fps that might be close, but I can roll them slugs out my 870 pretty darn fast!
 
With my primary HD shotgun (20" Rem IC Rifle sighted) all 8 pellets of a Rem Managed recoil 00 load will stay on an 8.5 x 11 paper at 25 yds. At 10 yds they only spread about 3-4 inches. 10-11 yds is the longest shot I could possibly take within the confines of my house. But even at 25 yds..........hold an 8.5 x 11 paper up to your chest..........Yeah. It'd be ugly.

With my Mossberg 835 with modified choke all 15 pellets of a Winchester 3" magnum load will stay within a 10" circle at 25 yds. Remington 3" gives very similar performance. 3.5" loads give a few more pellets but about the same size pattern.

If I have to engage targets beyond 25 yds, that's why there are Brenneke slugs in the sidesaddle or butstock of my HD shotguns (with the exception of the 835 where slugs are a no-no). Also why the last 2 rounds in the mag are slugs. If I chew through 5 rounds of 00 buck and the situation hasn't been resolved, my feeling is more buckshot isn't going to resolve it.

I just picked up another Mossberg today in a trade. 18.5 inch barreled 500AT. We'll see how it patterns when I can get to the range with it. Got an 18" 870 that needs patterning too. Next range trip is gonna be a shotgun fun day I think :)
 
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