The Box O' Truth #42 - Precision Shooting With Buckshot

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The Box O' Truth #42 - Precision Shooting With Buckshot - Page 1

Okay, I know that title might be a misnomer. The words "precision" and "buckshot" don't usually go together.

But at Thunder Ranch, in the Defensive Shotgun Class I recently attended, we discussed and did some drills about this subject. A 12 gauge shotgun, loaded with 00 Buckshot, is a devastating weapon at close range. As Clint Smith reminded us several times, "It will remove meat and bones."

But buckshot tends to spread out more, the further it goes down range. It has a very small pattern at close range, but a very large pattern at longer ranges.

The questions is: How big of a pattern does it have at X yards? And to make it even more confusing, we must add the qualifier "with this particular load".

I brought some Wolf 00 Buckshot to the class.

As you can see, it holds 9 - 00 pellets and they do not have a filler to cushion the shot.

This tends to flatten the soft lead pellets and deform them as they go down the barrel.

This will open up the pattern more than other, better quality loads.

But I used this load because I had to shoot a lot of them, and they were cheap.

I figured they were good enough for practice, and they did just fine in that application.

We set up targets and shot them from measured distances to note the size of the spread.

This target was shot at 3 yards. The spread was about 4 inches, not counting the wad.