An Indepth Guide to 12 Gauge Shotgun Ammunition

After firing the shot begins to disperse through the air in a group called a pattern or shotgun shot spread. This would be the closeness of the holes you would see in target practice based on specific distances. If all of the holes are placed evenly throughout the target and there are no voids, that is a good shot spread. If there are voids in the pattern, this means that it is either not good ammunition or it is too far out of range to properly hit the target.

Choke is the device at the end of the barrel. It basically chokes (compresses the radius of the shot by funnelling the pellets). Let me see if I can say this in a way that you can picture it without seeing it. Imagine the barrel of the shotgun. It is long and straight with a consistent diameter. The choke is a small extension that screws into the end of the barrel. It gradually gets smaller in diameter. This causes the pellets in the ammunition to stay closer together when it leaves the barrel.

There are several different sizes of chokes. The three main sizes of chokes that hunters use are as follows:
* Light modified
* Modified
* Full

Too much choke will make the pellets remain too close together. This will make it more difficult to hit your target. Too little choke will allow the pellets to be spread out too far from each other to make an actual kill.

There are 5 types of ammunition for the 12 gauge shotgun. The first is bird shot. This shot is made up of dozens to hundreds of small pellets. This makes hunting birds in flight easier. The more pellets, the bigger the kill spread. This allows the hunter to aim at a whole bird, not just a specific body part. Actually, when you are aiming at a bird in flight, you would want to aim at the head of the bird ( The bill if you can see it). The reason for this is that the bird will actually fly into the spread of ammunition that has been fired. The more pellets, the more likely you are to hit your target.

There are different sizes of shot that allow for different size bird. Starting with the smallest, #9 which has about 200 pellets to the largest FF birdshot which has about 8 lead pellets. For hunting, the game and the range will determine the size of shot and the amount of gun powder needed . The shot must reach the game and bring it down. For the money, lead is still the performer.

Here in the US, environmental restrictions are being place on lead. There are lead-free types of ammunition. They include steel, bismuth or tungsten.

The next type we'll go over is buckshot. Like birdshot it also is made up of small pellets. But the pellets in buckshot are larger in size but fewer in number, and made for hunting deer (hence the name). Buckshot is describe by the size of the pellet. The smaller the number, the larger the shot. The smallest buckshot is #4 and the largest is 0000 (quadruple-ought). The 12 gauge 00 (double-ought) buck is the most used with the police and military.

Due to todays technology the choice of big game ammunitition is the slug. In heavily wooded areas where you don't have a clear shot, buck shot is still the choice of ammunition. The reason is simple. When you are using a slug and are shooting through a branch with lots of smaller branches, you might hit the branch and miss your target. Using the buck shot which has more projectiles gives you a better chance of many of the projectiles going through the branches and still hitting your target.

Slugs that are made for shotguns are heavy lead projectiles, usually with pre-cut rifling. Wilhelm Brenneke made the first shotgun slug in 1898 and his design still remains today. When slugs first came out, the shotgun had smooth bore barrels, which means that the slugs had to be self-stabilizing and be capable of passing though a choked barrel.

Let me break down and explain to you what pre-cut rifling is. Rifling is when you have a spiral groove down the length of the barrel. The lengths of the spiral grooves vary. The varying lengths also determine how accurate your shot will be. Imagine the slug (which is a cylindrical projectile) in a pipe being pushed out by an extreme amount of force. What is going to happen is that the slug will start to spin and rotate on its way out of the pipe. It will hit pockets of air which will slightly change it's direction either up, down, right or left. This may not seem like much but once it leaves the barrel, the error will be cumulative over distance. This will of course put you off target and you may miss what you are aiming at. This is the reason they came out with the shotgun. They could put more lead in a target using buckshot because they are smaller, round pellets. You could put more ammunition and the effects of the cumulative error would not matter as much because many of the pellets would hit the target versus the one slug which might miss it altogether.

Now if the slug is perfectly balanced and is rotating but has spiral grooves on it, this will cause a different effect. The grooves will cause it to rotate down the length of the barrel going in a much straighter line. This is important because when it hits the air pocket, it will not be bounced around but will pass through it instead, keeping its projectory. This makes for a much more accurate shot and you are more likely to hit your target. You have a heavier, lower velocity round which will cause more damage to your target in one area. Unlike the buck shot with more of the smaller pellets, the damaged area on the target would be in more, but smaller areas.

With todays technology shotguns are made with rifled barrels, and now slugs are made to be fired from them with a spin stabilization. Todays rifled barrel shotguns are far more accurate than the smooth bore guns, and they usually come with improved sights or scopes. Now you can get slugs that have saboted sub-caliber projectiles, resulting in greatly improved external ballistics performance.

Saboted slugs are lead-cored, full copper-jacketed projectiles supported by a plastic sobot, which breaks away after firing. The sobot is the casing around the slug. The plastic sobot transfers the rifling from the barrel to the projectile. The plastic sobot also helps seal the bore and keeps the slug centered in the barrel while it rotates. It takes the place of the grooves on the slug. Because it breaks away from the slug when it leaves the barrel, this provides a much more accurate shot. The accuracy is approximately 300 meters (330 yards).

If you are buying a shotgun or have one for home defense you need to know what the best ammunition is for you and your home. Lets start with you, how many family members are there in your home. Where do they sleep? Most of the houses built today have the master bedroom on the opposite side of the house. That means there's a good chance you will be fireing in the direction of your loved ones.. Next is your home, do you live in a house, apartment or a mobile home. You might have a family living just on the other side of the wall.

Studies have found that bird shot is not an acceptable home defense shot shell. A shot shell must have adequate penetration. The shot must be capable of penetrating deeply enough to reach and pass through vital structures in the body from any angle. In 1987 the FBI wound ballistics meeting stated that the minimum penetration depth is 12 inches.

The Firearms Tactical Institute reports;
"Number 1 buck is the smallest diameter shot that reliably and consistently penetrates more than 12 inches of standard ordnance gelatin when fired at typical shotgun engagement distances. A standard 2 ¾-inch 12 gauge shotshell contains 16 pellets of #1 buck. The total combined cross sectional area of the 16 pellets is 1.13 square inches. Compared to the total combined cross sectional area of the nine pellets in a standard #00 (double-aught) buck shotshell (0.77 square inches), the # 1 buck shotshell has the capacity to produce over 30 percent more potentially effective wound trauma. In all shotshell loads, number 1 buckshot produces more potentially effective wound trauma than either #00 or #000 buck. In addition, number 1 buck is less likely to over-penetrate and exit an attacker's body."

LETHAL ROUNDS
Flechette- is made up of 8 to 20 aerodynamic darts
Frag 12- a shotgun shell that delivers high explosive blast, fragmentation
Grenade-exploding projectiles to increase long range lethality

LESS LETHAL ROUNDS
Flexible baton rounds-a fabric bag filled with birdshot or a similar dense substance
Gas shell - spray a cone of gas several meters away
Rock Salt - shell hand loaded with rock salt
Rubber Slugs or rubber Buckshot - composed of flexible rubber or plastic
Electronic Projectile - which contains a small electroshock weapon
Breaching rounds - designed to destroy door lock
Stinger - contains 16 gauge - 00 buck ball made of zytel
NEVER FORGET: WHEN USING 12 GAUGE AMMUNITION, YOU ARE NOT ONLY AIMING AT YOUR TARGET, BUT EVERYTHING ELSE BEHIND YOUR TARGET!