Buckshot for bucks?

[capnwilliam]

Any thoughts on the pros and cons of using buckshot vs. round ball for deer? I know that buck often is looked down on, but why wouldn't heavy (00 or 000) buck - one pellet even - be an effective deerstopper, assuming the velocity were high enough? Then, multiple rounds = multiple chances to hit. Seems like it would be more effective than ball. (?)

Capt. William

 

BAD, bad, bad, idea!
I'm sorry if I come across as a bragging blowhard, but I don't know how else to get peoples attention quickly on this subject.
I seriously doubt you will find many people that have fired the THOUSANDS of rounds of modern buckshot than me.
As a general rule buckshot...well, what's a polite, scientific way to say it? Buckshot....well, it SUCKS as a game stopper.
A tiny .22 to roughly .32 caliber roundball moving along at a whopping 1200 f.p.s. is puny. Puny, yeah, puny, that's a really good word, puny. Really LOW energy and even less penetrating ability. Look, 00 buck is about .32 caliber and at about 1200 to 1300 f.p.s. at the MUZZLE ain't no power house.
My personal test with thousand of rounds of buck turned up this:
3" magnum, buffered, copper plated HARD shot, in 00, 15 pellets, in a GOOD modified 12 ga, choke is pretty good out to FORTY yards, In a really good modified 12 bore you can keep all 15 00 buck in a 10" circle on average at FORTY yards MAXIMUM!!!!!!!
So at around 40 yards a hunter would most likely KILL the deer IF he centers the chest and all 15 or most,of the buck land in the kill zone IF the hunter is not shooting through a bunch of brush and saplings.
Buckshot is extremely lethal and works better than most would believe when used as it's designed to be used. AT CLOSE RANGE! I mean UNDER 20 yards in MODERN 3" magnum ammo in the right gun with modified choke AFTER the hunter has done a lot of patterning work first.
Don't believe me? GOOD! Buy 20 rounds of 3" magnum buck, get a deer cardboard target and lots of paper to cover holes from previous shots, pace off SIXTY yards and blaze away and tell me how many of the 15 00 buck landed in the kill zone.
If you have a really good modern gun choke combination you might get all 15 in the kill zone at 40 yards.
But could you resist a shot at old mossy horms at sixty yards, just to wound him?
Now try that 15 pellet buck load out of your black powder gun without copper plated, buffered, pellets and a good choke and you've got a gun that will probably wound everything you shoot at beyound TEN yards.
I've PROVEN that the standard police riot 870 Remington cyl. bore with std. 9 pellet 00 buck can and often does completley miss a man sized target at 25 yards.
A sheriff friend of mine engaged 3 armed robbers in a close range open country gun fight. He dropped #1 face to face with his 870 riot gun 00 buck at 20 FEET, dead as virginity, #2 got smart and ran, and got dropped at 20 Yards, but wounded, and lived, #3 was missed twice completely as he too ran off at 25 plus yards.
#3 stupidly ran into another deputy on the next road, made a threatening move and got .357 magnumed to death.
oppps.
Good story huh?
Anyway buckshot is a bad idea, but by all mean try some AT THE RANGE.

 

I know of people who use buckshot, SSG or 00 for deer in Southern Ontario, but who switched to slugs for sureer stopping power. They found the buckshot to lack penetration and needed 4 or 5 to 'stop' a deer. Past 20yds. they lost too many so switched to slugs.
; I know for a fact that buskshot won't penetrate the ribs of a big bear(griz). They stop in the hide and fat layer. Slugs will not only go through that stuff, but smash the spine as well.
; I do wish buckshot was unlawful for hunting anything large than fox or coyotes & on top of that there is nothing worse for geese than buckshot, regardless of what some goose hunters will tell you. Even on geese, it takes multiple buckshot hits to drop one close to you. They are the worse crippler there is. There are so few of them in a shell, many geese can fly through the pattern at 60yds, receiving single pellet hits to die 3 miles or more from where they were hit.-BAD!BAD!BAAAAAAD!
; From a smooth muzzleloader, round ball is THE only projectile to be used for large game, deer included.

 

Don't be misled by the fact that many African professional Hunters often follow up wounded dangerous thin skinned game with a double 12 bore loaded with ssg or 00 buck. They do in fact use this for instant stopping power...BUT... they are in the THICK bush where shots are several FEET, not yards, and the patterns are often no larger than your fist.
As I said, 00 buck is a good stopper within it's range, 20 yards and under only. That shot swarm has to be concentrated to do damage, and at close range, it will cause lots of damage.
On drug raids and building searches for armed dangerous two legged animals I felt very safe wtih my level 2A armor and 14" 870 loaded with 3" mag #4 buck. Ranges are across the room distances.

 

[tg]

I worked up a buck and ball load for deer .600 ball with 6 30 cal shot on top of it, it is only good pattern (12") wise to about 15 yds, range is the big issue as mentioned above. I will only use it if sitting a few steps from a trail near dense cover at days end hoping the extra lead will drop the animal quickly or at least leave more blood to follow but do not consider shot alone an ideal deer load.

 

[Claude Mathis]

Buckshot+Close Range (Self Defense)=Good

Buckshot+Long Range (Hunting)=Bad

:m2c:

 

[atr]

I've taken one deer with buckshot and considered it a miserable failure so i've never done it again . The ammunition was Federal Premium 3 inch mag 000 buck . 36 cal at a bit over 1,200fps . The gun is a fully choked Remington 870 police model with a 14 inch barrel . Where i deer hunt it's farmers fields seperated by 50 yard wide rows of thick bush . The deer bed down in the afternoons so i figured i'd get in there with them and use buckshot at closer ranges . The barrel on my scattergun was done by Vang Comp and shoots very tight . Anyway i spotted a buck at about 30 yards and let him have it aiming for just behind and just below the shoulder . He went down then got back up and started to run in my direction . The second round put him down for good at 20 yards with a headshot . The autopsy revealed that my first shot delivered 10 pellets into him with about a 14 inch spread . Of the ten , one entered the body cavity but hit nothing vital . The other 9 were through the skin and into the muscle and one was found resting against a rib but the rib wasn't broken . The second test of the 3 inch mag 000 buck was on a large black bear of about 450 pounds that someone had shot and killed in a garbage dump . From about 15 yards i fired into his back left hip and then got my knife out . Hair , hide , 6 inches of fat and then muscle . Not one pellet made it to muscle . Everyone was recovered 4 to 5 inches in the fat . When i was running my bear hunting/guiding/outfitting service often it happened that a client would nail a bear with an arrow or bullet at just about dark over bait . When the weather is hot the hide has to be recovered as fast as possible or the hair will slip which meant lots of tracking after dark . I'd load my shotgun for tracking with buckshot as any shooting would be within a few feet by the light of a flashlight . Up to about 5 yards out the buckshot doesn't spread , it just leaves a good sized hole so i re-evaluated what i was doing . The buckshot left a big hole out to a few yards but the hit probability wasn't any higher than if i was using slugs at that range and unlike buckshot , slugs will penetrate . I switched to Brenneke 3 inch mag slugs and have tested them on many bear . No more buckshot for me unless i'm shooting IPSC . If we compare a single 000 buck pellet to a bullet at around the same speed with around the same energy we would be looking at a 158 grain semi-wadcutter .38 special from a 4 inch revolver . The .38 special would get the marks because it's 3 times the wieght of a buckshot pellet and a revolver can be fairly well aimed . A .38 special is far from being an adequate deer round and hitting them with 10 pellets at the same time doesn't mean you'll get 10 times the effect .

 

[capnwilliam]

Five replies, in short order, and all of them enthusiastically rejecting buckshot for deer; I won't quarrel with those stats!

Capt. William

 

[roundball]

HOWEVER......for a related report on what we could call MAGNUM "BUCK-BALL" LOADS:
============================================================
2003 - .62cal MAGNUM BUCKSHOT LOADS

FYI...as a related piece of information, I ran some tests in my .62cal smoothbore to see how a number of round balls would do by themselves. I tried numbers of Hornady round balls in a paper shot cup, first .440's, then .490's, with 80grns of FFg.

I could never get acceptable size or consistent shaped patterns with the small sized .440's because of the significant offset from each other due to their stagger-stacking in the bore. Their offset was so great that they were almost side-by-side but not quite, so that when they exited the muzzle they began veering off in various directions due to this stagger stacking. Patterns were 18-20" wide, inconsistent, never equally distributed within that spread.

However, the larger .490's were outstanding and it was because they had far less stagger-stack, stacking much more closely to a vertical line. The results were that 3 of them would repeatedly print a 3-4" group at 30yds, and 5-6" group at 40yds.

And there was plenty of energy...I had the target stapled to the side of a large wooden "cable reel" used by power companies. Each side of the wooden reel was constructed of 2" of hard wood separated by a few feet of air space, and the sets of .490's blew right through all 4 inches of hardwood.

Since the .490dia / 180grn balls are .50cal, obviously there should be no problem using them for deer hunting in any state, unless a state specifically does not allow a smoothbore firearm or multiple projectiles to be used for deer hunting.

Anyhow, it was an interesting experiment, and seems like the 3-ball load of .490's Could be a very viable deer load...sort of like a "magnum buckshot load"...anyone of the three balls striking a Deer in the vitals should do the job within 50 yards.

 

atr: Thanks for that wonderful "real life" report on buckshot.
And going from buck at close range to slugs is :imo: a good move because if you miss with a slug at that distance, you'll also miss with buckshot!
The ONLY reason I carred the #4 buck in the 14" 870 for serious social intercourse was to LIMIT penetration. At "across the room" ranges ANY solid 12 gauge hit is going to "stop agresssive action" (love those p.c. words hey?). The #4 buck proved in our tests capable of almost completely penetrating a human "simulated" target at 30 FEET max, yet PROBABLY not penetrate the bad guy and go thru the wall and knock granny off her rocker in the next apartment. Bad liability there. :what: :results:
That's the only reason I didn't load the thing with slugs.
Of course the intimidation factor of the 14" barreled shotgun carried by a ****** off cop in black SWAT uniform stopped most arguments right quick! :blah: :crackup: :crackup:
O.K. O.K. A quick story.
I'm with an FBI agent and we are searching for a bad guy that just robbed a bank and we had him i.d.'ed positivley. He knew we knew and was making himslef scarce.
A snitch (gawd love''em) told us he was in a g-friend apt.
The agent and I walked right in without so much as a 'howdy-do" and hard the bathroom door slam shut. The house was full of kids and a lone female and so the door slam most likely came from b.g.
I kicked open the bathroom door in my black boggie man outfit with 14" 870 and saw b.g. sitting on the shitter. I wheeled the barrel under his nose and smiled and said "Gotcha", all we heard was phfffffffffffftttttttttt, PLOP! :crackup: :crackup: :crackup:
(I gota million of 'em! :haha: :haha

 

[Claude Mathis]

And going from buck at close range to slugs is a good move because if you miss with a slug at that distance, you'll also miss with buckshot!

But, as you increase your distance, you at least have a little better chance with buck. Not knowing the distance ahead of time, makes me lean toward buck.

Another reason to stick with buck in the home, as you mention, is penetration. I want the projectile to stay in the bad guy.

P.S. CONGRATULATIONS! You win the contest for using the most Graemlins in a post. :crackup:

 

[tg]

Another method I tried waas to make up a dummy barrel esction out of a piece of drilled wood and useing a dowl to keep the shot from going below the level of the bore and laying a thin patch in the bore then the shot and tying it in a small bag, which was later put atop the ball. at 20 yds the .600 ball was a bit below the point of aim and a large raged hole about 2 1/2" in diameter was a bit above and to the right of it, I have wondered how a dozen shot tied in a bag and shot with out the ball would work, at close range I suspect you could put your fist through the hole.

 

[Leonredbeard]

Uh, maxiball,
What should I do? Having researched hunting here in South Jersey, the only hunting I can do this year for deer is in the regular shotgun season and that with buckshot. OK, I could borrow a modern shotgun with rear sights on it and use a slug. That is what I should do. The only other way, according to your experiences, is to make sure I don't shoot at anything farther away than 20 yards. I could affix a rear sight on my old Lefever double and load conical slugs in it over triple se7en. Sorry, this is the traditional hunting site. One other thing I could do is to put a rear sight on my yeager 20 gauge and load a conical slug in it. Now where to get twenty gauge slugs? Maybe .58's and put a thick patch around it over a thick wad....hmmnnn! Well, thanks for steering me away from double ought in my yeager.
God bless.
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