SportsmanNH

I am going to be the contrarian with my experience using buckshot with 3 examples.

1 ) And the only good one hunting up in Maine . I shot ay a HUGE buck running in an alder swamp at about 60 yards late one afternoon with my rifle. It got dark 20 min later and I couldn't find a blood trail . I though I had a good aim but couldn't find anything. Came back the next morning to look for sign of a hit . But this time I brought my Browning A5 12ga magnum with a 28 inch full choke barrel loaded with 3 inch magnum 00 buck with 15 pellets . As I reached the swamp and was in about 20 yards , I heard something running towards me out of the thick spruce running towards me standing . And to my surprise a bear comes running full speed right at me. I fired just as it entered the edge of the grass at maybe 18 yards. That bear went down like a rock. I thought I blew its head off . BUT after checking I only hit that bear with 2 pellets . One followed the backbone in the fatty layer and only penetrated about 8 inches . Never hit a bone and just stayed in the fat. The second one hit that bear square in the center of his forehead . Perfect round hole going into his brain . It was not a big bear . 136 lbs. Only 2 pellets with the bead right on his face ? And it gets worse from here.

2 ) Hunting in NH I had a big Doe STANDING at about 65 yards in mature hardwoods . She would walk and stop. She stopped between 2 trees where I could see her front legs but not her head . Her back legs were behind a tree. But I could see her whole chest and mid section. Piece of cake shot. I fired once. She just stood there . I was baffled. I fired again . Nothing. Still standing there . Third shot and nothing ! She moves a little bit to the next tree. Now I can see her head and full chest . 4th shot . NOTHING ! She turns and looks at me ! Just as she started to trot away I fired the 5th shot ! She just keeps trotting . She went 20 yards and stopped again and looked back at me standing there with an empty gun . I packed it up and left the woods swearing I would never use buckshot again.

3) Not as critical because I was shooting at a coyote running at a clearcut about 80 yards. 3 shots and never hit a hair . So after the coyote was gone I fired another shot at the tree line that was about 100 yards . It took at least 2 to 2 1/2 seconds for those pellets to hit the trees . So where is the 1300 feet per second ? This was only 300-350 feet and it took that long to hit. Maybe they leave the barrel at that speed but they lose power quickly.

So if this is how it performs with 15 heavy pellets , shooting at a deer with # 4 buck will be like shooting at a deer with birdshot . I needed to know how bad the performance was at a target . I just put a full size 4x8 sheet of plywood standing up at 45-50 yards . Aimed at dead center the middle of it. I hit it with 3 pellets . One hit a foot from the ground on the right side, one hit 6 feet up from the ground dead center and the last one barely chipped the edge of the sheet about 4 feet up on the left side. If you ask me buckshot is worthless after 25 yards.

If you have a rifled slug barrel get some sabots, or if you have a smoothbore barrel use rifled slugs like Brenneke and throw the buckshot away.