Heavy birdshot?

[C-grunt]

Okay first off I just want to throw out that I am 100 percent not an advocate of birdshot for defense.

A while back at work I was involved in a homicide case. The victim was shot with a shotgun, 1 shot, at a ditance of around 10-20 yards. The victim had probably 30+ (fairly conservative number, possibly as high as 60) holes that spred from the waiste line to the neck line. From the way the shot pattern was, there had to have been a large number of pellets that missed the victim. The pellets penetrated deep enough to cause significant damage all throughout the victims torso and he died at the hospital after several hours in surgery. Doctors said there was just to much damage to most everything in the torso.

Im not much of a bird hunter so are there shotgun shells that have something that is in between buck shot and bird shot? I cant think of any type of buckshot that has that amount of pellets and every other person that I can think of that was shot with birdshot had mostly nasty but minor wounds. Hell we even had a 3 guys executed with birdshot and of the three, one lived and one died later from infection. So what was so different about this case?

[currahee]

There is a pretty steady continuum of shot sizes from 12 (smallest) to 000 buckshot. Common shot sizes are from 9 to 6, they make good training ammo being a good bit cheaper than 00. I am an advocate of nothing smaller than number 4 buck for self/home defense but have always figured that the larger the individual pellets the better it would be if I had to choose.

[Joeywhat]

There's a TON of shotshells out there. There are 3.5" turkey loads that shoot #2 shot or even bigger shot like BB at 1500+ fps. 1.5 ounces of that shot...which I think is about 50-60 pellets of BB.

He could have been hit with anything. There are a lot of nasty shotshells out there. There are a TON of birdshot loads as well. Everything from 2.75" target loads, to same size shell but with larger shot, to magnum loads with more/larger shot. If you Google "shot sizes" you'll find some good links that show the number of different shot sizes available.

[Redmanfms]

I'm thinking a turkey load. They usually have larger pellets (usually 5 or 4 in size, sometimes bigger) that are lead (or lead replacement), well buffered, and pushed to pretty high velocities. Turkeys are pretty tough animals, I've seen lighter loads with smaller pellets quite literally bounce off the feathers at 20-30 yards. But the specialized turkey loads with larger shot I've seen go through-and-through the body at the same ranges.



That said, strange shit sometimes happens. It may have been an everyday field or target load and the victim was just extraordinarily unlucky. People have been killed with .25 Autos and pellet guns......

[Kokopelli]

I like a #4 up front followed by 00 buckshot.. Ron

[Snake Plissken]

I like a #4 up front followed by 00 buckshot.. Ron

You mean you would make your first shot in a defensive situation and the second shot using two different types of loading?

[Kokopelli]

You mean you would make your first shot in a defensive situation and the second shot using two different types of loading?

Not exactly.. It's used for pest management on the property. I use a 1911 for HD! Cheers.. Ron

[PriseDeFer]

Charles Askins suggested duck shot for interior distances and my assumption has been that he said because he did it.
He is held to be a genuine homicidal maniac by some, another way of saying street creds.

[DocGKR]

I prefer #1 buckshot, as it offers adequate penetration depth, reasonable intermediate barrier penetration, and 35% more tissue crush than 00 buckshot: https://www.m4carbine.net/showthread.php?t=99583.

[nineteenkilo]

I have no actual data to back it up, but I've always thought that some of the duplex magnum turkey loads would make a hell of a mess if they encountered human tissue - especially some of the 4x6 or 2x6 variety.