New buckshot from Federal

[Bigtanker]

[video=youtube_share;FnlBQcV9IUA]http://youtu.be/FnlBQcV9IUA[/video]

 

[Mgderf]

In my best Henry Gibson voice,


"Verrry interestink"

 

[jerrob]

Looks a bit gimmicky to me.
Has there been an issue with the (9) 00 buck pellets that stay together not working?

 

[AmmoManAaron]

Mostly just marketing hype. Old timers basically had the same thing when someone got the idea to reload their shells with split shot lead sinkers. The idea never really took off because there's not a lot of point in reducing the size of your buckshot pellets once they hit the target and most of the pellets aren't going to be facing the correct direction at impact to cause them to split in half anyway. Bottom line: choose the size of your buckshot and number of pellets when you buy your ammo and don't rely on gimmicky design to try and do it for you.

A related old-timer design called "strung buck" had wire crimped into the split shot sinkers to try and get more wounding capacity. Now that was an interesting idea, but it ran into a few problems. The thin wire would break on impact and then it was just a tail of wire following each pellet through the target. If the wire didn't break, the pellets didn't have enough energy to make the wire cut through the target to an adequate killing depth. The solution was bigger and bigger pellets and wire...to the point where you pretty much just ended up with two to four big pellets (or cast lead discs) with a short length (maybe 2 inches) of wire between each one. Those mostly worked ok and sometimes performed well on target, but required a lot of manual labor in making the payload and then loading it into the shell. The result mostly wasn't worth all of the effort unless you had the time and just liked to tinker...and if you think just using normal handloaded hollow points for self defense in your handgun is a bad idea, those 12ga handloads are on a whole other level!

 

[KellyinAvon]

Mostly just marketing hype. Old timers basically had the same thing when someone got the idea to reload their shells with split shot lead sinkers. The idea never really took off because there's not a lot of point in reducing the size of your buckshot pellets once they hit the target and most of the pellets aren't going to be facing the correct direction at impact to cause them to split in half anyway. Bottom line: choose the size of your buckshot and number of pellets when you buy your ammo and don't rely on gimmicky design to try and do it for you.

A related old-timer design called "strung buck" had wire crimped into the split shot sinkers to try and get more wounding capacity. Now that was an interesting idea, but it ran into a few problems. The thin wire would break on impact and then it was just a tail of wire following each pellet through the target. If the wire didn't break, the pellets didn't have enough energy to make the wire cut through the target to an adequate killing depth. The solution was bigger and bigger pellets and wire...to the point where you pretty much just ended up with two to four big pellets (or cast lead discs) with a short length (maybe 2 inches) of wire between each one. Those mostly worked ok and sometimes performed well on target, but required a lot of manual labor in making the payload and then loading it into the shell. The result mostly wasn't worth all of the effort unless you had the time and just liked to tinker...and if you think just using normal handloaded hollow points for self defense in your handgun is a bad idea, those 12ga handloads are on a whole other level!

Are we talkin 12 gauge grape-shot here?

 

[Bigtanker]

From the little I've looked into it, I guess the idea is once the pellet hits the intended target, it splits into 2 peices, thus reducing the chance of over penetration.

Marketing hype? Yep. But people will buy it.

I did find a few gel tests. I'll post those later.

 

[Bigtanker]

@ the 4:00 mark, directly from Federal.

[video=youtube_share;kDV3ZkqZSN0]http://youtu.be/kDV3ZkqZSN0[/video]

Basically, big buck shot flies in a tighter pattern than say #4 Buck. But #4 Buck doesn't over penetrate like 00. So the idea is to make it fly like 00, but make it penetrate like #4.

 

[Michigan Slim]

I cast my own 0000. Like it just fine.

 

[DadSmith]

What is the average penetration for this rd in ballistic gel? Does it get the minimum 12"?

 

[Tactically Fat]

It's not often that the Big Names in Ammo Manufacturing do anything "Gimmicky". Though the Zombie stuff from a handful of years ago is a good argument of it, that was more marketing and colors on the packaging vs. actual "gimmick ammo".

You can bet there's been hundreds and hundreds of man hours worth of engineering and research that has gone into this.

 

[JeepHammer]

I agree with Ammo Man, and I do remember the split shot being loaded.
Messed with it when I was young, and spent money on loads that didn't do anything different than regular 00 shot.
What mostly happened is they hit butt first or sideways and folded closed instead of opening up.

There is a thread on 'Tacti-Cool' self defense rifle ammo (probably endless threads) when plain old thin skinned game soft points consistently show just as good, or better than some of the silly stuff in every remotely scientific side by side test...

I'm a fan of a scatter gun in home defense, if 00 will drop hogs & deer, it will make a mess of whatever it hits...

I keep thinking of the woman home with kids when a couple of stalkers tried to break in,
When the lock broke, she fired a load of #4 through the door, and the hospital reported they were treating the bad guy for 'Gunshot Wound To The Groin'!
(Best 'Grouping' EVER!)