#00 spread at room distance

[DHart]

A quote I often see re: shotguns.
"At typical room distance a shotgun has very little spread, so there's no hit percentage advantage over a rifle."

Benelli Nova 18.5"
Winchester "Military Grade" 9 pellet #00 Buckshot
12 yards (distance from my hallway to the front door, across the living room).

Your set-up is foolish at your anticipated 12 yards. And close to useless at any greater distance. (Though it would be effective at 3 yards.)

Obviously, you're convinced that this choice of yours is wonderful and you stubbornly cling to that belief, so what's the point in perpetuating this thread any further? Six pages of wasted bandwidth, in my opinion, and potentially very misleading to newbies as to the correct set-up for a home defense shotgun. Time for me to unsubscribe to the thread.

[ChicagoTex]

But I'm positive you'll be 100% at 3am, in the dark, with a full adrenaline dump because...

I don't need to be 100%, that's what follow-up shots are for. You seem to be treating this entire issue like every body only gets one shot - that's preposterous.

But if I am 100%, or even the 14% necessary to get a successful shot off out of the 7 loaded in my 870, my rounds will hit all they need to.

The fact is you've set your gun up for failure by almost guaranteeing misses coupled with your hits.

Have you ever tried talking with all those shooters you apparently watch (since you've never referenced your own shooting experience beyond a patterning shot...) who allegedly have "extensive training" and see what they think about you setting up your gun to fail?

Madness... absolute madness... DHart may well have had the right idea.

[panzerr]

And delivering them to the wrong place would be ineffective.
And the chances of delivering them to the wrong place increases the smaller you make the pattern.

Wrong place? Ineffective? Delivering a tightly patterned load of 00 buck to a limb will either remove it or incapacitate it. Delivery to the abdomen will eviscerate, delivery to the chest will be absolutely fatal and delivering it to the head, well, we've all seen a melon get crushed. that kind of blow is going to have a great effect any way you look at it.

[shootist~]

Lots of panties in a wad arguing over personal opinions.
Can this thread be relocated to TOS?

[panzerr]

Lots of panties in a wad arguing over personal opinions.
Can this thread be relocated to TOS?

I agree that this is a matter of personal preference, however this thread hasn't been much different then any other thread on this site. In fact, I've seen outright flaming go unchecked in other threads (DPMS/Bushy/Oly vs the world threads) when popular opinion bashes unpopular opinion.

Some good points have been raised on both sides of the issue. Even though I know where I stand I find value in reading opposing thoughts because you never know -someone may write something that just might change the way you see things.

While I don't agree with Jody, I give the guy credit for sticking up for what he believes is most effective use of a shotgun with arguments that are solid enough to not immediately dismiss.

[Glock17JHP]

This is not rocket science...

Choose some of the good load and go and shoot them at the maximum distance your scenario would expect. Then chose one that has a pattern of maybe 4 inches at that distance. 12 yards in a HD scenario seems to far (36 feet?), although I haven't been to your house. I would not expect more than 7-8 at my house.

LE would typically want tighter patterns due to the scenario they could encounter as compared to a HD scenario. Federal FC is going to be best fr LE, Ranger may be fine for HD (my choice).