+1

Buddy and I split a case of 'em back in the day, they were on closeout and cheap as hell, they do about minute-of-pieplate at 40-50 yards or so, lol, but dayummm i'd hate to get hit with one, they do damage out of all proportion to what they are.

I forget which page, but here's the Clint clip you referenced

I've never done it but I've heard from guys that hunt with muzzleloaders that big pieces of soft lead just seem to have killing power that's out of proportion to their ballistics.

I can confirm that a .54, 425 grain soft lead hollow point, over 120 grains of black powder, does a lot of damage.  They didn't have cheap chronographs when I was shooting with an old school muzzleloader, but I think that was getting 1400 fps or so.

The few times I went fishing in Alaska I always had a Remington 11-87  with a magazine extension loaded with slugs. 8 shots.  I carried strapped across my back. I never worried about bears.
I saw a guy kill a huge brown bear with a 12 gauge slug at 60 yards, that bear only took 2 steps and was dead right there.  He was on a legitimate hunt. He had a 7mm Weatherby magnum for long shots.

If bears were the concern for me a shotgun with slugs would absolutely be my choice.

Seems like this would be a good choice for that:

https://www.brennekeusa.com/hunting-ammunition/black-magicr-magnum/

602 grains at 1500 fps.

A bear will probably notice being hit with that.

Or a helicopter.

Shot those in a 870 "slug master;"
Went through a box of 5 on sight in and said that was enough.
Wholly wa, if an Illinois whitetail is that tough I'm hunting the wrong county.

Jesus, that is serious stuff.

So in light of this post I will admit I was wrong. Shotguns cannot be stupid if they can double as artillery.

What’d y’all do to 1301 prices?

I think they’ve went up $100 in the last week.

Unobtainium now, but here's what we bought :https://www.ammunitiontogo.com/product_info.php/pName/250rds-12ga-nobelsport-650-round-ball-ammo

.650 high antimony lead ball at 1400 fps, doesn't say the weight (maybe it does on the box somewhere, have to dig 'em out of the stash and see) but basic extrapolation says they should be around 410-415 grs.

ETA: That's a .650 entrance hole, and probably about a 1.25" exit hole, yikes.

What's the advantage of this over a regular Foster style slug?

Shotguns are probably the multi tool of small arms. Can do a little bit of everything decent but no one thing perfectly. Can come in very handy depending on circumstances. Combat shotguns are probably the most well rounded but I wouldn’t call them stupid.

RELOADING a shotgun is fucking stupid.

Just rack it to scare the burglars off.

In reality, pretty limited utility. One is almost universally better served with a rifle and pistol.

Shotguns are great however for shooting birds/waterfowl and breaching locks.

Unless your LARP lets you have multiple sets of gear, egress plans, and carry unlimited weight and ammo. I imagine lots of people planning to bring their entire gun and gear collection in the great escape. They'll be dropping shit inside the first 500 yard sprint. Shotgun will be the first to go.

Bud White

Top men.

Oh absolutely nothing, except price, IIRC we paid like 75 bucks for 250 rounds. Regular slugs even then were around .75 to .90 a round.

Gimmick rounds are sold to get more money from ill informed people. Just about any 1 once /1once+ slug will serve you well out of a 12gauge.

Well sure, and I have plenty of regular slugs, but there's also a lot of fun to be had as a recreational shooter with cheap "plinking" ammo. I have a brick or two of .22 shorts in my stash, and certainly the .22 LR rounds I have would serve far better for hunting small game, but the shorts were dirt cheap and they're fun to shoot at little metal targets.

But sometimes a brother just gets the urge to "plink" with a big bore, know what I mean? It certainly has nothing to do with being "ill-informed".

OK not ment for you and other guys like you and me. I get it, some times you just want to try it out and see what all the hype is about I have done that too.

I was talking about guys that are not really into shooting and will be taken in by gimmick rounds and guns that really don't do anything better if any than some good standard proven ammo/gun that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

Love Clint!   (non-homo)

ARFCOM mentions something and it either spikes up in price or goes O.O.S. just like that (finger snap)

Probably because of this thread. Lol

Nothing better than a double barrel shotgun and some minishells.

They're very straightforward to cast yourself and you don't have to worry about them overexpanding like a soft hollow slug might.

Wrong.

The arfcom finger snap

If that was directed at me, have you tried them and what's gimmicky about shooting a spheroid projectile out of a shotgun?

I am sure it was directed at my thread title…

I used to run the bowling pin program at my club, 25 years ago.  I used to have a "50 foot shotgun slug" division.  I was the only one who ever messed with it, because I used to be sitting on a pile of several hundred slugs.  Those "ball" rounds would get it done.  A slug moves a bowling pin off the table like the hand of an angry god.  I did this at the end of the match, when the pins were all beat up anyway.  My dad would do the same thing with his .44 mag lever gun (now my gun).

Man, those were the days.  I was young, stupid and very fast.  My best time with a five pin table, my pump Mossberg and #4 buckshot, was 2.71 seconds.  There isn't any gun with reasonable power, that I could handle and shoot faster and more accurately at close range.  I did a LOT of shotgunning back then.  Birds, rabbits, deer, steel, anything and everything.  Folks who don't "get it" just have no idea how fast someone who knows what they are doing can run these things.  Super fast, accurate enough to hit a bowling pin (about a 4" pattern at 25 feet), with an ounce and a quarter of lead going 1300 fps, will end a lot of problems.  There was an old timer that cleared a 5 pin table with a Benelli M1 Super 90 in under 2 seconds.  That old guy could run a shotgun.

The author....

Cocksucka!

It might be an elaborate "pump and dump" scheme.

I spent the afternoon running my m4 at the range…..combat shotguns are a ton of fun.

(I'm firmly in the camp that most people are better served with a carbine than a shotgun, and pump shotguns were made obsolete in 1900.)

The "backdoor shotgun" absolutely is the king of barnyard distances, loaded with #2 or BB tungsten shot.  

#4 lead Buckshot doesn't throw a dense enough pattern for a >30 yard running woodchuck.  #4 lead birdshot doesn't penetrate enough to quickly kill a big woodchuck.

Tungsten goose loads are basically an instant off switch for coyotes, out to 40yds.

"Most people," you're right.  At my club, we do this "Ladies Day at the Range" event, every year.  We give ladies a chance to try out the various disciplines.  For years, I ran the home defense shotgun portion of it, spreading my love of shotguns.  98% of the ladies love it.  There is always one or two every year that just lack the physical strength to handle a shotgun.  I'm talking elderly or extremely small women.  I have a ported, 20 ga. Mossberg youth gun, with an adjustable, spring loaded stock.  I put the butt stock against my chin and shoot a pepper popper to demonstrate how lightly it kicks.  Even with that, one or two out of 50 can't handle it.

But the ones that can handle it, can always make hits.  The problem is, they just aren't that fast.  Could they be made to be fast?  Yes, but with a lot of practice, and many of them just don't have the interest to practice that much.  A lady that weighs a buck-twenty-five gets knocked around, and that's that.  Physics is physics.

A few years ago, I decided my time would be better spent running a home defense carbine session.  I handed off the shotgun thing to a friend, and created a carbine class.  I only have an hour and a half with these ladies, so I have to work quickly.  I start them off with a purpose built .22LR AR, then move to a 9mm AR, and then a 5.56 AR.  Universally, new shooters were better and faster with ARs.  They would sometimes be intimidated by the noise of the 5.56 gun, but once they got past that, they realized the recoil is insignificant.  Once they have the hang of it, we let them open up on steel targets at home defense ranges, with the 9mm gun.  Next year, I'll have frangible 5.56, so they can do it with the full power gun at home defense range.  Ringing steel like that turns them into believers.  Many of them are a little scared of the evil black guns when they walk up, but they leave giggling.  Over the past 12 years, I've run more than 500 women through this thing, so I have a lot of data points.

So, "most people," yes.  Just like "most people" are better served with a 9mm handgun.

Luckily, I'm not "most people."  I put in the work over the course of more than 40 years, and I have the physicality so that I can handle heavier shotguns the way most people handle very light ARs.  So I'm very fast to that first shot, the split times are short and each shot is substantially more lethal.  My VR80 12+1 gun makes all but the most ridiculous "home invasion" arguments irrelevant.  If a problem within my walls (or right outside of them) is solvable with one man and a gun, this will do it, all day long.  The moment I have to leave the house (or even if I'm closer to one), I'm grabbing an AR though.

The same thing goes for 10mm / .40 pistols, vs. 9mm.  If you have to outfit an agency with diverse body types, skill levels and varying commitments to training, 9mm is the way to go.  But, I don't have to worry about that.  I compete in IDPA in the same class as the 9s, and I beat most of them.  

And don't even get me started on big bore revolvers, or I'll have to head to my bunk...

But for night time ambushes of partially submerged beavers, at 10 yards...  I've messed with 00 and #1 over the years, but this last summer, it was #4 buck towards the end.  I think it's the way to go.  00 has too many holes in the pattern.  #1 is pretty good, but hard to find.  #4 seems to be the sweet spot.  The best chance for a CNS hit, and if not, something else vital is destroyed and they immediately do a death roll.

#4 buck is marginal on people, due to penetration on big / heavily clothed bad guys.  My preference is 16 pellet #1 if I can find it, or 12 pellet 00.

I have a 3 1/2" gun.  I bet a 54 pellet load of #4 would get it done on running woodchucks, but I don't hate them enough for $4 a shot. I patiently wait for them to stop running and shoot them with .22LR Velocitors from the back window.

I prefer 16 pellet #1 buck or 8 pellet 000, giving me lots of sufficiently sized pellets or ones that noticeably outperform the smaller sizes when it comes to smashing bone and defeating barriers especially.

I love the dense patterns of #4 buck but I'd be hesitant to use them defensively beyond a very close range scenario where overpenetration is a major concern, because of that lack of penetration.

I've seen #4 pellets fail to exit empty plastic milk jugs at less than 20 yards, and be reliably stopped by all kinds of barriers (vehicle bodies, interior walls etc) that  larger buckshot had no real issues with.

They're great for pest control though so I always keep some around.

Fuck you Charlie

The ballistics test guys usually show 00 buck having almost too much penetration, at 20", but the 9 pellet pattern is kind of sparse, which is a bigger problem.  That's why I like the 12 pellet 00 short magnum load.  It's a pretty good compromise between 9 pellet 00 and 16 pellet #1.  After a few years of not being able to find any decent buckshot, anywhere, I was able to find Remington 16 pellet #1 and 12 pellet 00, so I bought a bunch.  Either will do great.  Maybe load up with the #1 for warm weather months, and 00 for cold weather months, when bad guys might be wearing heavier clothes?

While digging around, I found some useful videos...  

I was shocked to see how shallow the penetration of a Remington 1 ounce Slugger was, at 12.5", but holy crap, what a wound profile:



Winchester Super X 16 pellet #1, also around 12 1/2" penetration:



Federal Flitecontrol 9 pellet 00 (full power, not the reduced recoil wussy stuff), around 19 1/2" penetration:

U.S. manufactured 00 often has a higher pellet quality than the other buckshot sizes, where its less common to find pellets that are extra hard and/or plated.

This makes for a big difference in penetration in some mediums in my experience.

On the other hand I've heard from a guy that had like 50 years worth of buckshot hunting experience, that soft lead unplated loads have noticeably more "slap" on live targets, all else being equal.

He was a huge fan of soft lead 000 for big game.

I picked a case of the new Federal plated 1B Max to keep in my at-home gun.

That's nice looking stuff.  It should be, for that price.

https://www.federalpremium.com/shotshell/premium-slug-buckshot/buckshot/11-P154+1B.html

Fantastic movie. Badly underrated.

Any chance that stuff has the flite control wad in it?

Big, soft lead chunks are the original expanding/fragmenting projectiles but with enough momentum to (usually) make two holes.  Big holes, air in, blood out. Crude but effective.

That one is quite serious, but this load is their "heavy hitter" with 800ft/lbs more energy (3,800ft/lb) than then black magic.
Not recommended for the recoil sensitive

Savage 311R guard gun for the win! End of the world Sh!!