I've decided to try to put my little single shot NEF 20 gauge on light duty as a home defense gun.
Trust me, I'm well aware of the limitations of this gun for defensive purposes. Still, it shoots slugs well, and it's a youth model so it's light and compact and very fast handling, and it's paid for. For the purpose of this discussion, I won't be replacing it with a pump action 12 gauge. I wish I had kept that Mossberg 500 12 gauge I owned before and I admit it... but for now the 20 gauge is part of the HD rotation and that's it.
I shot it some today and found that out to 25 yards it still does fine with slugs, which is great because I'll be using it for a little bit of camping security here and there too.
It patterns well enough with bird shot but that doesn't really matter because I probably won't be hunting with it.
It is absolutely terrible with buck shot. I was shooting Remington 2.75 inch 20 gauge No.3 buck with 20 pellets to the load. My gun has a modified choke. At 25 yards only 14 pellets hit the target at all, which was a whole folded over sheet of newspaper approximating the distance between an upright person's shoulders and hips for both width and height. At half that distance, all the pellets hit the newspaper but there was no real pattern - they were spread out over the entire area with only one pellet hitting center mass. The rest were just... everywhere.
Strangely, at that range, a load of 2.75 inch #6 patterned into a much more dense and centered pattern.
Are there other loads I should be trying to improve the effectiveness of this gun with buck shot?
Does anyone offer a load with something like BB or T shot for the 20 gauge? That's almost buck shot and if patterns anything like the No.6, it would be a site better than the buck shot I tried.
Trust me, I'm well aware of the limitations of this gun for defensive purposes. Still, it shoots slugs well, and it's a youth model so it's light and compact and very fast handling, and it's paid for. For the purpose of this discussion, I won't be replacing it with a pump action 12 gauge. I wish I had kept that Mossberg 500 12 gauge I owned before and I admit it... but for now the 20 gauge is part of the HD rotation and that's it.
I shot it some today and found that out to 25 yards it still does fine with slugs, which is great because I'll be using it for a little bit of camping security here and there too.
It patterns well enough with bird shot but that doesn't really matter because I probably won't be hunting with it.
It is absolutely terrible with buck shot. I was shooting Remington 2.75 inch 20 gauge No.3 buck with 20 pellets to the load. My gun has a modified choke. At 25 yards only 14 pellets hit the target at all, which was a whole folded over sheet of newspaper approximating the distance between an upright person's shoulders and hips for both width and height. At half that distance, all the pellets hit the newspaper but there was no real pattern - they were spread out over the entire area with only one pellet hitting center mass. The rest were just... everywhere.
Strangely, at that range, a load of 2.75 inch #6 patterned into a much more dense and centered pattern.
Are there other loads I should be trying to improve the effectiveness of this gun with buck shot?
Does anyone offer a load with something like BB or T shot for the 20 gauge? That's almost buck shot and if patterns anything like the No.6, it would be a site better than the buck shot I tried.
I think buckshot is really meant to be a close range load.
