buckshot

patterned some Hornady #4 Buck 2 3/4 24 pellet this morning

cyl, mod , full, and turkey

everything looked good at 25 yards

nothing looked good at 50 yards I think 8 pellets was the best I did on any of them at 50 but most of those were at an edge

6 pellets with 4 fairly close to the middle with full would have been the most useful

I was actually surprised how well it patterned with cyl

I tried a couple 27 pellet Winchester also abut the same decent at 25 yards and all over the place and very few on target at 50




when it isn't so windy I need to get a big sheet of cardboard and see what the patterns that I didn't catch on cardboard look like

Factory chokes?

Are these copper plated and buffered? Makes a huge difference.

the Varmint express with the versitite wad I took thta to mean it was like a flight control

Like I said actually decently impressive from a cylinder tube at 25 which is were most people think the outside use range of buck shot is

however for coyotes it would sure be nice to see better patterns at 50 yards

https://www.hornady.com/ammunition/shotgun/12-ga-varmint-express-reg-4-buckshot#!/

the cylinder and full are carlsons extended chokes , the mod was factory rem and the turkey was a primos extended ported

I think the dot is a touch to the right of where it should be but I didn't adjust it because it was sighted in for slugs

Effective range of buckshot about 35 yards

that does seem to be the case here I am sure the pellets are lethal just that a coyote at 50 would only have caught 1-3 pellets from most of the shots I fired at 50

36 caliber hornady muzzle loader balls out of a 410. At close range I think even a 410 would take down a deer. I did this 3-4 years ago. Somewhere I got load details wrote down. I remember using h110 powder. No chronograph but I am pretty sure they are at least 1200fps. I buffered them with cream of wheat. I raised my point of aim for the second shot

Interesting that one wanders a little in each group

Jeff, if I were a betting man, I would say the one flier is the bottom most pellet in the shot column. That's the one that will see the greatest load on ignition. It's carrying the weight of the three pellets ahead of it therefore I would expect to see the greatest amount of deformation. Probably be a lot worse without the buffer. It would be interesting to check out different buffer materials and/or harder lead alloys. Anybody got a 36 cal round ball mold? I have several different alloys of lead.

I was just seeing what would happen. I had to wonder also what would it look like with a commercial buffer and hard lead like wheel weights. Buckshot is illegal here I suppose because its such a close range to be effective load.

buckshot is also illegal here for anything but fur bearers which mostly means coyotes and fox.
although it would technically be legal for coon and possum also

beaver and muskrats if you are a land owner shooting them on your own pond

I never play with it much in the past but was trying it

incredibly effective still at 25 yards and if your use for it ends at the furthest distance across your house few people have >75 foot open spaces across a house

I would also guess that the bottom pellets tend to be the fliers , chokes have in some cases been shown to reduce fliers to some extent in testing I have seen , but good wad design and a few less pellets also seems to make a big difference , cheap buckshot tends to not have a shot cup type wad , more of a gas seal over the powder with some wadding then balls

where this versatile wad is more of a cup

in my 00 testing Fiocchi was the best patterning stuff I found in what you might call budget buck shot it also recoils less than these Hornady and Winchester loads did.

if you can find the Hornady it was about 15 dollars for 10 rounds so reasonably priced and at 25 and in even from a cylinder barrel it seems to be good

of course we al want to figure out how to have 50% of pellets in the C zone or better of the target at 50 yards , it's the goal , getting there I am not sure how yet

A coyote can go a long way with a couple of buck size pellets in them. If you really want to extend shotgun range, the heavier than lead and especially TSS is effective past 60 yards.

OTOH- my lead buckshot attempts have been similar to your results. Basically a 30 yard load.

Peter Capstick wrote an article on buckshot a long time ago and it was very thorough. I believe he said #1 Buckshot was the best choice, but like you, over 30 yards it loses effectiveness quickly.

I am more likely to leave the shotgun at home and just carry the 223 while it isn't the best at fast close shots I am decent enough with it that I can make it work and have the range.
a .224 bullet will fly farther than a .22cal ball , but I only have one of them to worry about also and not 24 with no clue where half or more of them are going to end up other than basically direction of travel of 1-2 degrees. not like I would shoot 2 degrees from a person I like to keep it to more like 45*

I think on a calm day I should put up an 8 foot by 8 foot wall of cardboard and start backing up from 50 yards and get a real idea of where those fliers are going

a fragmenting .224 bullet that will come apart when it hits the ground or most anything else may just be a better tool.

I know with slugs a lot of people convinced themselves because they couldn't hit what they were aiming at that the shotgun slug was in the dirt and I know they are lethal a lot farther than you can control where the round impacts other that a couple degrees.
so they would aim way high and it made it less safe because people treated it different than a rifle thinking max range was 150 or so yards when that really isn't the case , a rifle actually proved to be safer in practice even with greater range because people treated it like a rifle and could hit what they were aiming at.

I think everyone should pattern buckshot, especially before hunting with it. It’s an easy way to get an understanding about how well some loads perform compared to others.


When ammo variety availability wasn’t an issue, I bought a box or two of every type of buckshot I could get my hands on from mini buck to 3” premium. Setup sheets of newspaper with a white sheet of paper in the center. Some loads didn’t pattern well at all and were more of a random appearance on the target/newspaper if they even all hit the paper. Others performed extremely well. For example, 3” 000 is my gun’s favorite. 10 pellets, consistently grouping in tight patterns. Every pellet on paper, mostly around the center sheet, all the way out to 50 yards. Other loads with more pellets would even have pellets that didn’t even make it on the newspaper at times. Quite an eye opener and time and money very well spent. That gun has a modified choke, permanently. Everything could change from choke to choke, barrel to barrel.


It gave me confidence for shots taken with my preferred buckshot loads, and it made it clear why so many people hate buckshot and blame it for missed or wounded game—-they probably weren’t shooting loads that their gun patterned well for many of those stories. It pays to pattern.

I just got a Kick's Buck Kicker for my Mossberg Maverick that I'm going to pattern soon. They're supposed to be an awesome choke.

I have a Carlson's Coyote for my 835. It patterns 3.5 #4 buck pretty well. Those shells are brutal to shoot though. They kill on one end and cripple on the other.

All my shotguns shot buffered the best, my sp10ga liked a cyl. choke and my 1187 liked a modified choke.

Have taken deer out to 75 yds with 3” loads of 000 and 00. I shoot a 30” full barrel on an 1100 mag.

I agree. If I were in the brush, which I'm not ever, I may change my mind.

Wow. That's a long ways to be shooting buckshot at deer.

I have a cousin who claims 60 yards he has one old side by side that apparently is a bucks shot super gun , it is probably also a particular load.

loads can have such a big difference

I have a carlsons BSC buck shot choke in my 500 the guy at carlsons said it used the same geometry as their normal extended full , it was just ported
it sends shot very nice hardly ever put anything else on that gun.


the buck I tried last year seemed to be good with it , that was the fiocchi 00 , you never got all the pellets on at 50 yards but there were always 2-3 very close to point of aim

I used to use #4 buck years ago for geese. With factory full choke and 30 inch barrel. Killed geese a long ways out.

#4buck is my preferred load for calling coyotes in the thick stuff. #1 buck is a close second. 00 wasn't ever good for much in my eyes

I think the primary purpose of 00 at this day and age is people because it gives the penetration to get to the FBI standard,

in the past when you could put together enough people to do a drive and put them 50 yards apart no shot was going to be much over 30 yards and any of the buck shots would be very effective.

we didn't even have coyotes until the late 80s early 90s in southern WI
my grandpa use to hunt a lot of fox in the 50s and early 60s not sure what he used for shot , I know he used a 12ga it was the only gun he had.

My dad used to hunt fox in Ohio with #4 common shot.

My brother shot a lot of fox and few coyotes 30 years ago with #2 lead in a .20ga. 3".

I have used buckshot for hunting big game for a few decades. In most of my shotguns, #4 buck and #1 buck pattern well with a modified choke, while 00 patters best with a full choke. I shoot only2 3/4" shells. I have not found any benefit to the longer shells.

The flight control buckshot has proved to be an advantage over regular shells in my 18" cyl bore guns. In my barrels with chokes the budget shells work fine. I like Winchester and Fiocci the best, but I've used other rands successfully as well.

#2 lead is really hard to find in 2023

closest thing is probably the Hornady coyote nickel plated lead BB or lead #4 everything I see for #2 or #3 is steel.

I will see if I can find 0buck or #1 buck maybe try the BB

I knew there were no factory loads for it. Is it not available for reloading either? I assume all sizes of it is or was hard to find. I have some old stock #2 in 12ga.

The deer I killed at 75 yards was hit in the head. It was running flat out across a cut cornfield. I missed it a few times and could see corn sucks flying because I was not leading the running deer. On my last attempt, I shot about a body length in front of it, and the deer cartwheeled, stone dead.

Inside of 40 yards, it is not uncommon for some 00 and 000 buckshot to completely pass through a deer. Many pellets are caught in the hide on the offside as well.

I haven't shot a shotgun at a deer in about 30 years now. I no longer participate in hound hunts.

hound hunts sound like they would be a blast , in WI we have to take turns being the dogs gets harder to find the land and people all the time.
probably similar issues with hound hunts.

Anyone with a reloading press can come up with some pretty gnarly buckshot rounds for the cost of the buckshot, which tends to go pretty far. Same hulls, powder, primers and wads as normal trap loads. BPI sells a couple versions of #0 buckshot, which runs 0.315 vs. the normal 0.330 of #00 buckshot. With the #0 version, 9 pellet load that weigh just shy of 1 oz will stack 3 x 3 in most wads sized for a 1 1/8 oz trap load, and when placed over something like 20 grains of Green Dot, will exit the barrel at around 1,350 fps. You would not want to be standing in front of it when it goes off.

The 0.330 version of #00 buckshot will not stack in 3's inside any 12 gauge shot cup. It will stack in 2's, so 8 of them (1 oz) will stack fine, but you will have to find a modern era 1 1/4 oz wad to contain them, or else allow the top 2 to stand proud of the shot cup. You can do that if you have some wads for older style hulls with high internal base.

Point being if you have a shot shell press and want to have access to an abundant and economical supply of potent buckshot rounds, get yourself some #0 buckshot and go to work.

I may need to do that, my dad has a Mec I can buy off him we used to make trap loads when it made sense to do so and we were shooting league.

I don't have a ton of use for buck shot but have been playing with it a little lately mostly to better understand it.

most everything I do with shotguns on game is #4, #5 or #6 on birds and rabbits If I find a good supply of #5 which is sometimes harder to find I would probably just buy a bunch of that and split the difference on 4 and 6
had a case of 5 in my cart the other day and fell a sleep and the sale ended and price jumped back up

7.5 or 8 on clay just buy cases of trap loads now

slugs on deer always used to buy the 15 packs of Winchester shortly after deer season ,but with the state going rifle and the shortages I mostly just see 5 round boxes so I grab a couple here and there to keep stocked up when I see them at farm and fleet.

If you are gearing up for yotes, I have some experience. There have been lots of yotes killed with Federals 3" copper plated BB's. If I was prepping for fifty yards or less that's what I'd want. A lot of times they killed yotes further than that. I don't know if you can find them anymore though. If I seen a case of them today I'd buy them all. #4 Buck is pretty good. We had a lot better luck with T and F shot. Shoot 100 yotes with those loads and you will find that the BB's roll them end over end and that when you have #4 buck in they don't roll but leave a good blood trail, get about 100 more yards, and may be winking at you when you get there. I had some custom F shot that the hull had a rolled crimp holding a piece of cardboard in the end to keep everything from rolling out. I don't know what it was about those but my shotgun really liked them.

I got to where I was loading up staggered. First three shots or so were 3" BB. Next couple few those 3" F's. Next couple few 3.5" #4 buck. If there was a far first shot I needed I had time to chuck in a heavier load in the chamber and since they are far you can get away with the noise.

The old timers I hunted with killed thousands of yotes and fox over the years with their old Magnum Browning Belgium A5 whale back at 3" copper plated BB.

I think they roll from the BB b/c the circle of shot smacks into them and has more surface area when they get smacked. I'm sure there's a smart word for that. Like in your picture when the half a dozen #4 for hit they don't roll but get deep and get pretty leaky.

I'm sure I have some of the above somewhere if you want to try to re create them.

If your pattern seems goofy try a bigger choke. I settled on an extended Carlson choke and also had an extended mag tube for the assortment listed above.

Pete, Hound hunting is not all fun and games. Deer run for many miles, crossing boundaries, highways, and rivers. After many hunts, some of the dogs spend several days in the woods until they either came back to where they were released, or homeowners find them with their dogs. Dog owners would get calls at night to learn that someone had their dog in their backyard. Today, electronic dog collars make tracking a wayward dog much easier. If the day of the hunt is windy, the stand hunters could not hear the hounds and stay hopelessly at their assigned stand hoping a deer might come by.

To hunt small plots, a beagle mix was often used. They would often chase a deer for about a mile then come back when called. Not so with larger hounds.

Most hound hunting now is on very large tracts of land. It is losing its popularity among younger hunters, as the older generation passes on and property is divided or sold. It is increasingly harder to obtain control of contiguous tracts of land. Someone will always pay more to lease land on small farms.

thanks for the info

Hornady makes a nickel plated 3 inch heavy coyote https://www.hornady.com/ammunition/shotgun/12-ga-heavy-magnum-reg-coyote-bb-3#!/

I will see if I can find some to try

I am running Carlson's extended chokes and a mag tube

I used to carry a 12 gauge and my .223 when hunting fox, I had trouble with 4 buck, I had better results with 0 buck, or 00 buckshot