What does .410 do well?

There was an interesting story in an old gunzine.
A skeet shooter set out to determine the cause of his lower scores with .410.
He fired 100 shots on paper and found that his skeet gun would not fire 100 consecutive patterns without holes big enough to miss.
But his neighbor kid's .410 Ithaca would. A wealthy kid, right.
I am sure he got a new skeet gun or barrel.
 
"...It’s a great starter shotgun..." No, it isn't. The .410 is for experts. A .410 will usually end up frustrating a new shooter. A 20 gauge semi-auto deals with the perceived felt recoil issue, but still lets the new shooter succeed.
It doesn't do anything better than a 12 or 20. Even with slugs, that aren't exactly easy to come by. Buck shot is a waste of time(3 whole pellets in Winchester 000 Buck).
 
probably the best all around gun I ever used for squirrel hunting was a Mossberg 410 pump. low recoil, light carry, inexpensive.
 
I use my rem 870 pump 410 for late season rabbits, I use # 4 shot and the area I like to hunt is thick with brush and briers and full of holes, in late winter they sit just out side the holes in late afternoon getting warm in the late sun. the #4 shot kills then right now so they don,t get down the holes and yet does not fill them with shot at the 15-20 yards max.
 
.410

I very much enjoy .410s. I own a few and shoot one or another regularly.
For me, the only advantage of the .410, though, is that they are lighter guns and easier for me to carry in the hilly uplands of PA. They are way less forgiving than a 12 or a 20. I shoot 16 yard Trap with mine fairly often (I am not a great Trap shot in any case) and I know that there are shots that are misses with the .410 that would have been powder with a 12.
Beginners gun? I think not. A beginner wants to, needs to, see a positive result and the little .410 just does not throw enough shot nor provide the pattern consistency that the larger gauges do.
Lower costs? Have you bought any .410 ammo lately? Generally, .410s are a few dollars more per box than equivalent 12 ga. I reload mine.
 
Mike38 said:
If you are a rabbit hunter, the .410 is the best shotgun available. I used one for many years, and bagged hundreds upon hundreds of rabbits with it. I had one of those .22 LR over a .410 shotgun double barrel break open guns. If the rabbit was sitting, click over to the .22. If the rabbit was on the move, click over to the .410. The perfect rabbit gun.
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I have a savage 22-410. A meat gun. Light enough to carry all day and if you miss with the rimfire, you get a second shot. I shot a lot of rabbits, squirrels and a few partridge with that gun. I upgraded to a 222 over 20 gauge and put a reciever sight on it. Its a better meat gun mostly because I shot a deer with it.

My frind shoots a bolt action .410. He hunts everything with it, even frogs.

You need to be a pretty good hunter because range is shoter than a 12 or 20.

I never tried hand loading for the 410. For as much as I shoot it, store bought stuff is fine.

David

Sent from my SM-T900 using Tapatalk
 
.410's

Bigger guns throw more shot and denser patterns at all degrees of choke, which results in a gun with which it is easier to hit and kill birds on the wing. The payload on a .410 makes it a poor wingshooting gun for most of us, and as others have said, not necessarily a good choice for beginners, though many, including myself, had a .410 as a first shotgun.

But if not wingshooting, the .410 properly loaded, is a useful tool to take rabbits and squirrels out to 25 maybe 30 yds. As a rabbit gun, hunting ahead of slow moving beagles, bunnies in close can be shot without a lot of meat damage and yield more palatable table fair. Same of course for squirrels, if their not too high up in big trees. Even a light 12 ga load, inside 20 yds, can put enough pellets and holes in a cottontail or squirrel to make poor eating. The .410 is also a useful garden and pest gun, and a light 2-1/2" trap load will not ricochet dangerously like a .22 might when shooting around properties and structures, despite what attention you pay to your backstop. It is also less of a kicker of course, and comparatively quiter than bigger bores.

I think the .410's reputation for useless stems from folks using too large a shot size (yielding thin patterns) and then attempting shots to far for the skimpy cloud of shot. Seems all the stores in may area consistently stock .410 in #4 and #6 shot, just like the larger bores. And another thing seems that the short 2-!/2" shell is oftne stocked as well. Now certainly, a load of #4 (or #6) from a .410 inside 20 yds will yield dead critters. But stretch that distance just a wee bit,and that pattern will get VERY thin in a hurry.

My family hunted .410's a great deal on rabbits ahead of beagles. The load was the 3" shell and #7-1/2 shot. That is smaller shot size than typically used on fur clad small game, but the smaller pellets yield denser, more even patterns inside 25-30 yds and never seemed to compromise killing power in our use. I'll add that you can carry twice as many .410 shells as anything else in your shell vest, important if you were a kid hunting all day and missing some!!!!!
 
I shot a lot of grouse close range with one as a kid. I was at a garage sale with my dad and they had a 410 single shot break action for $10 with a box of shells. Eventually it had some sort of problem opening so it was sold for something like $10 and a 20 gauge took its place.
 
I believe that darkgael and bamaranger have answered fully.

My experience is that my .410 is a great bird gun in the latter stages of a three-day hunt. At that point, I'm pretty ragged, and just getting up to the point is tough on me. The gun has made me effective at that stage.

I cheat-I use 3" shells, with bird shot, but both the dogs and I appreciate the results.
 
Went to Boy Scout camp when I was a kid. They taught us to shoot clay pigeon's with a 22RF loaded with 22RF shot. What did we know. We weren't very good with it but we did break clays. If you have a problem with the 410 then all I can say is you probably haven't shot one much! You learn to shoot what you have! I know a guy that act's as gunner in call backs for retrieving at field trials. His gun of choice is a 410 single shot. Also know several trainer's that train with the 410, not often they miss. It's what they are used to. I prefer carrying my 28ga and 410ga bird hunting to carrying either of my 16's. They are a lot lighter and make a bird just as dead.!
 
1) It’s a great starter shotgun particularly for youth.
2) They’re available in single shot as a bolt gun (for beginners)
3) The costs are usually pretty low
4) much lower recoil than larger bores
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I question the lower recoil statement. Yes in identical firearms it would have lower recoil. The .410 single shot I learned on was LIGHT and recoiled noticeably more than the later .20 gauge pump I later "graduated" to.

That being said for kicking around in the woods during squirrel and grouse season when I'm not "really" hunting it's a hard gun to beat. It was cheap when my dad bought it to teach me to shoot and if I dropped it in the creek crossing it I would be annoyed but not out anything.
 
My Verona LX702 carries very nicely when I am hiking the So.Cal. mountains looking for mountain quail. It also does a nice job of dispatching those little track stars.
 
Teach kids to use a shotgun.
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But it doesn't teach that at all; it is the smallest payload which makes success even harder, and thus more discouraging. The 28 would be a good one or - even better - loading 28 gauge level 3/4oz loads in a 20 or 12 the kid can handle. My 3/4oz 12 gauge loads work just fine in my 2 Beretta gas guns; the recoil is so mild my recoil-averse wife can shoot 150 shots at targets in a day.
 
I ████ a lot of rabbits when I was s young fella. It taught me to not miss because it was a single shot.

David

Edit: the word under red is shot unless I spelled it wrong. [emoji56]
 
David, if you got the red, you spelled it wrong. The red blocks are the replacement for "censored" in the language filter. :D

I have a fondness for the .410, mostly nostalgia, but not entirely. People say its a great gun for kids beginning, and other say its an expert's gun and both are right.

The relative light recoil, is beneficial for beginners, and allows them to learn the principles of shotgunning. It'd dandy for small game animals and pest varmints at closer ranges (its a barnyard rat wrecker supreme), but for wingshooting the small shot charge and generally full choke guns make it an experts gun.

My personal beginning was with a .410 (a bolt action Grandpa had) and after shooting a whole box of (expensive) shells with only one bird hit, I decided that it just wasn't enough. Got permission to use Pappa's double 12, and despite splitting my lip open with my thumb the first time I shot at a bird, I never looked back.

So, use a .410 to teach youngsters the basics and then move them to a heavier gun for wingshooting as soon as they are physically capable. For a pest gun, its tough to beat.

The old time "classic" farm when I was a kid invariably had at least two guns, a shotgun, usually a 12 or a 16 and a .22 rifle. If there was another gun in the house, it was usually a .410 (for pests not worthy of the 12). The was the usual, for farmers, who weren't sport hunters. And sometimes even if they were hunters. 12ga does quite well for ducks and deer within its range limitations.

several folks have mentioned 28 ga and yes, technically its superior to the .410 without much more recoil, BUT where are they???

You could always find .410s somewhere back in the pre Internet, pre Walmart days, when dept stores, hardware stores and general stores sold guns and ammo, there were always a few rounds everybody had, .22LR, .30-30, 12 ga, and .410. Might not have MUCH .410 but somebody always had a box somewhere. Might not have 16ga and wouldn't have 28ga, seems other than .410 the smaller gauges went away and the 20ga took over the "lighter" spot.

Nowdays, my most frequent use of a .410 is in my T/C Contender. With the straightener 'Choke" tube on a 10" barrel, patterns aren't horrid at short range and its a handy pest gun. And, take a look at the ballistics of the .410 slug. Accuracy from a smooth bore isn't great but a 109gr (1/4"oz) slug at 1600fps (from the full length shotgun barrel) is not worthless.
 
Thanks all, great input.

Because one of the reasons I'm looking at .410 is it shares food with my Taurus Judge, I have no interest in a 28 gauge. I'd have more interest in a 24 gauge simply because in the future I intend to get an antique Snider-Enfield rifle and shoot it and 24 gauge hulls work.

Unfortunately nobody makes a 24 gauge shotgun today.

I'm not a bird hunter, but rabbits/squirrels are one reason I got the Henry in .327. Not a bad caliber if they're relatively still, but when they're moving a shotgun is better and I would imagine 20 gauge is too much shot for them.

Buckshot is limited to 000 with 3, 4, or 5 pellets. That's fine for self defense, but not enough for anything in the field I'd imagine. So, what about slugs? What can a .410 slug reliably take and at what distances?
 
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