Bird Shot For Home Defense

The load of choice at SCDC used to be birdshot - 7 1/2s or some such. Awhile back there was a well organized riot where the inmates used mattresses to enable them to close with the guards. The light loads would not penetrate enough to stop the inmates. The SCDC then tested larger and larger loads to get full penetration of the mattresses. End result - a 2 3/4 load of # 5s was chosen as the duty load.

My HD load is a round or two of # 2s, followed by appropriate buckshot/slugs.

Giz
 
In my HD shotgun.......

the first two rounds up are Remington HiBrass #4's followed by Winchester OO buckshot.
 
The "creeper" business happened about 20 years ago. The perp was entering women's houses while they were there asleep, and raiding the panty drawer. He got his kicks doing it while they were asleep in the room.

My dad saw the photos of the wound while he was on the jury that convicted him.

As to waiting three days, and telling the Sheriff he would have shot the boyfriend......How smart do you have to be to sneak around people's homes in the middle of the night while their at home? How smart do you have to be to use her bathroom to take a leak, AND FLUSH, while the boyfriend loads a single barrel shotgun?

By the way.....after he did 4 years in the state slammer, he returned home. Several years later his body was found in a road ditch. Somebody put three .38 Specials into the center of his old shotgun wound. These did penetrate.
 
If you want to cover all your bases you need to go with #4 at least.I too know of an incident where #7 1/2 failed to penetrate a heavy leather jacket.I guess your first can be a 7 1/2 if you want,but that second round better be able to do the job if the first round fails!
 
I keep my mossy loaded with kind of a "shotgun cocktail"

1 Rock Salt
2 Bean Bag
3 Slug
4 Bird Shot
5 000 Buck
6 Slug
7 Flechette
8 Dragons Breath

if someone survives that I give up, take my money and rape my wife and cat.
 
illum99:
Mixing the load in a shotgun used to be called a "Dutch" load, for some reason.
Usually it's a mix of different shot sizes for special situations:
A road block would call for the first out of the mag to be slugs to blow engines or tires, 00 buck to penetrate car bodies, and #4 buck for when any occupants tried to escape on foot.

If you were expecting a "Bonney and Clyde" style getaway you would reverse the load from light to heavy, #4 for when they're running to the car, to slugs for when they're driving away.

I'm not too sure about the rocksalt. That's going to be pretty indefensible in a court room, whether it's a "good" shooting, or not.
 
luckily it's the first shell so I can always rack it out before shooting, chances are the wife will be covering them with the other shotgun anyway and she loads nothing but 00.

honestly I'm not sure why I decided on rock salt since I'd probably never use it.
 
I tested #8 birdshot vs. 1/2" plywood at room-sized one-yard increments. Don't have the numbers handy, but suffice to say #8 will blow thru nearly anything in the same room, and won't leave the room with any appreciable force. Ideal tradeoff, especially with 8 rounds in the tube.

As for candycane/coctail/Dutch loads, methinks it's a bad idea. When things are going down that fast and seriously, you want to keep things simple and consistent so you'll know exactly how the next round is supposed to perform. Expecting a slug and setting the house on fire instead isn't good. If you're worried about having different options, either keep something else loaded differently, or have the different loads on a sidesaddle. We talk about fine vs. coarse motor skills, goes for cognitive skills as well.
 
Personally, & in my home (I've a legitimate 25+ yard-shot in my house ... yes, it's been measured with a steel tape & shot at "that range"), I'll use the load that works best in the shotgun that I've actually patterned for that specific load.

It's Fed's Premium 3" mag, #4 buck - 41 pellets of ~.20/.22 caliber which does an 3-6" pattern at that extreme range (yup, I mis-posted earlier at shotguns - will correct soonest) - works for me & my habitat. But that in only one shotgun with a mod-choke ... likely it would vary quite a bit with any other & with any other choke.

In fact, I've another HD shotgun set-up that does quite a bit different & requires a wholly differnt load for max "efficiency." It doesn't shoot my "best load" at all well & requires a completely different set up to provide best for HD.

Shotguns are a very differnt breed all unto themselves.

Pretty much like saying that a .308 Win round will print t 1.5" high at 200 yards w/o a sighting shot first = you must pattern your gun to see how it shoots & with what!

If you haven't patterned your shot, you have no idea what it does at various ranges & that with various chokes/shot size out of your shotgun.

Even with "same chokes" out of the same gauge, you'll get a wide variety .... only way to be certain is to actually pattern your load, your gun to see what happens ....
 
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