To expound on my already beaten to dead post, I surfed over to hevi-shot.com and did a little adding and subtracting to try and make sure I have remembered all the numbers right... here is what I found that I wasn't 100% on....
1) Hevi-steel is giong to offered in the 20 gauge now.
2) Based on the slight of hand marketing environmetal uses, and knowing what I do about Hevi-shot duck vs Hevi-shot goose..... they are offering "Hevi-shot Waterfowl 20" which I can only assume is real hevi-shot goose since they included a goose on the package and anything else could actually be constituted as illegal (at least from my understanding of things). However, they do list a 20 gauge offering under both the duck and goose sub-pages on their sight.... the goose sub page would not load... so I wasn't able to see if the product ID code is the same for both (meaning that its the same product in both places... which to me would mean it contains real/true 12g/cc hevi-shot).
3) They list "Classic Doubles" as 26% more dense than steel. If you give steel the benefit of the average and assume the steel they are comparing is 7.8g/cc.... multiply that by 1.26 and you get 9.8g/cc..... which is right around or slightly more dense than Hevi-shot Duck.
4) Hevi-steel is listed as 20% more dense than steel... using that same figure as above.....7.8 multiplied by 1.20 gives us 9.36 or 9.4g/cc. How they figure that it is "
44% more lethal than steel" is beyond me when in the heading above they list it as 20% more dense?
Here is a quote directly from their FAQ section (which they have finally updated.. even up to last year they still listed Remington as their only loader....)
*Please note how the "Density" sub-topic is quickly skirted... and that they list only "Hevi-shot" and do not specify whether it is duck or goose... I am assuming that it is "goose" they are using, as this is what was known to all of us as "Hevi-shot":
ORIGINAL: Hevi-shot.com FAQ page
Density –
Take a ping pong ball and a golf ball. They are both the same size but a golf ball is heavier (more dense) than a ping pong ball. Suppose a major league pitcher were to throw one of each at you from 30 feet away. Would you worry about the ping pong ball? What about the golf ball? Which would you rather get hit with? In this example, the shot size (ball diameter) is the same, the muzzle velocity (from the pitcher’s arm) is the same, but the denser ping pong ball overcomes air resistance better than the light ping pong ball. Now think about that as in steel shot versus HEVI-Shot®.
Steel comparison- Drop down 3 – 4 shot sizes. Advantage – smaller shot size = higher pellet count.
[*]B steel = 4 HEVI-Shot® [*]2 steel = 2 HEVI-Shot® [*]4 steel = 7 ½ HEVI-Shot® [*]6 steel = 9 HEVI-Shot® [/ol]
Lead comparison – drop down 1 shot size. Advantage – smaller shot size = higher pellet count.
[*]BB lead = B HEVI-Shot® [*]B lead = 2 HEVI-Shot® [*]3 lead = 4 HEVI-Shot® [/ol]
So what happened between you and Remington? We had many more new products than Remington was willing to bring to the market and we decided not to just keep them to ourselves. We knew other hunters would want to use them and sure enough, they do!
Why don’t I get patterns like the ones I hear about from everyone else? Every gun patterns differently and you have to experiment with choke and shell combinations in order to find the best combination for your gun. There is a great article in the October 2006 American Hunter magazine by Dave Henderson that discusses this subject in detail.
How do your products compare with:
•Remington’s Wingmaster HD: Our products cause more tissue damage than any round pellet for better lethality, is less expensive by about 30% and our pellets don’t crack on setback. We haven’t been able to get any to pattern.
•Winchester’s Super Elite: ours causes more tissue damage than any round pellet for better lethality and is less expensive by about 20%. Apparently, judging from the still target competitions around the country, ours patterns better too!
•Federal Heavyweight: ours have 20% to 40% greater pellet count and similar pellet energy, for much broader coverage and greater lethality. We simply give you better odds on the bird at about half the price per shell. Apparently, judging from the still target competitions around the country, ours patterns better too!
•Federal HD: This product compares to HEVI-Steel®, but costs 2.5 times more than HEVI-Steel®.
They go on to say that perfectly round pellets do not have the ballistic or aerodynamic advantages that their pellets have... they compare them to rifle bullets and airplanes.... I'm not an aerospace engineer.... so I'll make no judgemetns.... but I can make comparisons and clearly see how I think they are spinning some of this information... why is it then, for so long.... that all these major ammunition makers have gone to painstaking lengths to ensure that their pellets are uniformly round? Why bother if there is not an advantage? Sure I'll buy that a jagged pellet will cause a larger wound channel.... but you can't tell me that a lopsided golf ball is going to fly like a Titleist Pro V1. I remember shooting rocks out of a slingshot as a kid and having a bitch of a time hitting anything because they curved like a pitch I only dreamed of ever throwing.... but taking some real slingshot ammo or glass marbles.... I could shoot bottles at 20 yards and hit 4 out of 5 times. I just don't buy it!
Here is that part of the FAQ:
ORIGINAL: Hevi-shot.com FAQ page
Pellet Shape-
Unlike other types of shot, HEVI-Shot® pellets are irregularly shaped. These shape modifications allow them to slice through air and birds by reducing the boundary layer in air that slows shapes down. There is a widely held myth that shot should be spherical to fly well. If that were true, people would shoot round bullets, fly round airplanes, and launch round rockets. Of course they don’t because spheres slow down too much in air. Smooth surfaces also work against superior ballistics. That’s why golf ball makers put dimples on the balls; they disrupt the flow around the ball creating a more stable and accurate trajectory. Aerospace engineers put trailing wires on airplane wings for the same reason. HEVI-Shot® gives you these ballistic improvements through the irregular shapes we produce in our shotting process.
Finally, they expound on the "real reason" for buffer.... while for years folks and ammo makers used it to help keep shot pellets round... they claim its another reason.... it also completely flips the rationale behind choke tubes and pattern density on its head. I always thought that the force of the oncoming wall of air was what caused a pattern to spread out... that combined with pellets that were not uniformly round.... who knew!
ORIGINAL: Hevi-shot.com FAQ page
Pattern –
Shot clouds vibrate as they run down the barrel, and this vibration scatters the shot as it exits the muzzle, leading to the familiar spread we’ve all seen on the pattern board. At HEVI•Shot® we do many things to dampen this vibration and improve our patterns even more.
For example, buffering. Buffer, essentially ultra-small plastic spheres that act between pellets like shock absorbers, dramatically reduces the “breaking a rack of pool balls” effect on setback, and keeps pellets marching straight up the barrel. We seal the buffer into the shell with light-activated polymers. We know this extra process is worth it when we see patterns improve by 2% - 5%.
I just have all sorts of buzzers in my business ethics chamber of my brain going off here..... I'm not saying they are full of it or outright lying or even directly misleading folks... but it seems to me that they are picking and choosing exactly which facts to disclose.... I don't think a company should have to tell us their secrets to manufacture or even their metalurgical mixes.... its a competitive advantage that they have played to gain a foothold in the market... its the basic of economy and free commerce... but just like how many calories per serving on the back of the serial box (and even they list the ingredients) they really ought to make these folks disclose the differences in their products.... how else is anyone going to know what they are really buying?