"FliteControl Wad" from Federal for deer hunting?

[Dr. Tad Hussein Winslow]

Picked up some of these Federal Premium 00 Buck rounds (2.75"), and hear that these flight control wads are are supposed to work well at keeping the shot super tight after leaving the barrel. Normally they are used for defense or so-called tactical work.

Coupled with a full choke, these could maybe raise your ethical distance for deer from around 35 yards to 45 or 50 perhaps, and act like a frangible slug (essentially) out to about 25 yards.

Any data on this? I'd want at least six or seven of the nine 00 pellets in the kill zone to stay ethical and down the game quickly. Wonder how far you can go out and maintain 7 of 9 inside ten inches?

 

[janobles14]

sounds about right. i have an 870 with a 30 inch full choke that can consistantly plaster 7 of the 9 in standard and about 11-12 of 3" within a paper plate at 40 yds.

i wouldnt so much worry about pellet numbers downrange but the energy loss. who knows though! stranger things have happened!

 

[Fred Fuller]

Pattern paper is your friend, Doc. Out of the 18" CYL bore barrel on my pet 870 house gun, I get 4" patterns at 25 yards with Federal LE 127-00 9 pellet loads with FliteControl wads. That's the full velocity (1325 FPS IIRC) load. I'd sure try the load out of the barrel you plan to use before hunting with it, too much choke might actually wind up opening patterns up by distorting pellets.

Good luck,

lpl

 

[Dr. Tad Hussein Winslow]

I'd sure try the load out of the barrel you plan to use before hunting with it, too much choke might actually wind up opening patterns up by distorting pellets.

Yeah, I thought of that Lee; thanks, and I would definitely pattern before hunting. May be the case that a modified or full is the way to go over an extra-full, or maybe even an improved cylinder - allows the wad to not be disturbed and do it's work - you just never know for sure until you pattern them. Seems like possibly the perfect deer round for heavy woods. Anything out to 20 yards, it acts like a slug (but a very devastating frangible slug). If you do need a long shot, it gives you a slight margin for error. Do they make a 3" mag flitecontrol round?

I get 4" patterns at 25 yards with Federal LE 127-00 9 pellet loads with FliteControl wads.

Very impressive for a cylinder bore; confirms what I had heard. That's actually not a great house-distance (10 yards) defense gun - not enough spread. But a great one at "medium" defensive distances: 15, 20, 25, 30 yards. I can see it being far more useful for police and .mil applications than civvies, other than hunting.

 

[JImbothefiveth]

It would probably not act like a frangible slug at that range, unless it really is a great improvement over regular wads

 

[kmrcstintn]

@ 2 years ago I tried several different buckshot loads out of different chokes in the shotgun I owned at the time; the full choke and 27 pellet or 34 pellet #4 buckshot became 'overchoked' and caused my groups to open up; you might want to pattern with several different chokes to see what works and what doesn't

 

[Fred Fuller]

That particular 18" barrel is an old 870P takeoff, thus it likely has a couple of points of choke (.002- .003", aka 'police cylinder') to even out patterns. I don't know for sure, I haven't measured it. It works for me, though.

There's a constant go-round in the Shotgun forum here over tight versus open buckshot patterns in defensive guns. I say, to each his or her own.

I happen to be a tight-pattern subscriber, I don't prefer a shotgun for HD because I can't shoot 8^). I like shotguns because I prefer something that's 73 caliber and tosses an ounce or more of projectile with each press of the trigger. Even so, buckshot that misses its intended target due to wide patterns is worse than useless. My standard for the loads used in the defensive guns here is a sheet of standard 8.5X11" paper. If a given gun/barrel/choke/load will keep all pellets on that paper at 25 yards, I'm happy. Much beyond 25 yards I'm switching to slugs anyway, out of concern for possible lack of adequate penetration with buckshot.

I don't deer hunt with buckshot as a rule, but if I did, I'd be more open to trying to stretch its useful range a little more than 25 yards. Deer don't generally wear multiple layers of clothing, or stuff said clothing with newspapers in an effort to keep warm etc. ...

lpl

 

[lobo9er]

It would probably not act like a frangible slug at that range

i would have to agree. might as well just use a slug, if looking for slug performance.

 

[hardluk1]

Can you give a reason that you want to use buckshot. Not try'n to be a smart a** about it. A real good buck shot gun will through buckshot to around 100 yards and kill a deer right now. But the average guy ain;t willing to spend the time to find a load that your gun likes that well. Unless your going to be shooting it in a heavily wooded area don't bother. Just shoot a slug out of a rifled barrel. We use to destroy deers at 40yards with 1buck if you missed your shot placement and could kill deer in there tracks at very close to 100 yards but that was back when only smooth bores shot slugs.

 

[RMc]

Flite Control 00 buckshot is ok for small buckshot.

The Federal Flite-Control wad does get small buckshot like 00B to pattern tightly in most shotguns. However the Flite Control Wad does not add any additional penetration.

I prefer to use large buckshot that patterns extremely tight and gives complete penetration. The Dixie Tri-Ball, with a payload of three .60 caliber hard cast 3/4 ounce pellets does just that.

 

[bswiv]

What has been said about "patterning" your spicific shotgun barrel is very important. While the Federal ammunition has a exellent reputation you should still test it against one or two of the other brands to be sure you get the results you expect.

More than that you should expand your testing to include some 000 buck and maybe some #1 buck. While I will say that we quit using #1 a long time ago, it's only been sense we did some testing of our own that we have switched to 000 buck from 00.

We did the testing because we kept noting that when we cleaned hogs, and yes I know that the fact we were CLEANING them meant that what we shot them with worked!, the 00 buck we were using was not penetrating all that well.

The test was rather basic but revealing. We had a number of old industrial supply catalogues that ran in excess of 1000 pages. We set these up at about 25 yards to test the relative penetration of 00 & 000. Fired the 00 first with the result that about 650 pages were penetrated.

Then we did the same with the 000. Now I expected the 000 to penetrate more, but not as much more as it did. The 000 went all the way through the catalog........not one pellet recovered.

Next we did a few patterning shots with both, and with a couple of old #1 buck we had. I fully expected the #1 to post the nicest patterns with the 000, due to reduced pellet count, to not be that good.

What we found was that out of my old Mossberg with a 20 inch barrel and the full choke tube screwed in the 000 would place them all in a plate sized area at a little over 40 yards. My buddys shotgun did almost the same.

Both the 00 & #1 did less well.

So with that information, and again this applies to our spicific guns, we decided that we should use the 000 as the improved patterns and MUCH improved penetration seemed to give us a few more yards of effectivness on hogs.

Used it all last season. Between the brother in law and I we took about 15 hogs, almost all with the 000. What we found upon cleaning them was that the penetration we saw on the catalogs translated to the hogs well. Had quite a number of pellets pass through hogs. Which is something we have seen very seldom with 00.

Not saying that YOUR gun will do better with it but if you are going to test the Federal ammunition throw a box of 000 in the mix to see what happens.

 

[Mike U.]

Do they make a 3" mag flitecontrol round?

Here ya go:


My HD goblin repellent load.