Accidentally bought some for a good price.

Didn't understand it was steel shot.

I don't need this ammo, but is steel shot any good for defense or is it better to just practice with it.

(I don't duck hunt)

Better than a sharp stick but I would throw it in my training ammo pile.

It is better than poking with a semi sharp stick you found on the ground... but really NOT a 'Good Choice' for 'Defense'.  

You really need BUCKSHOT to be able to reach deep enough to get to the major organs.

Birdshot can make nasty surface wounds, but #00, #0, #1 and finally #4 Buckshot are what you should use if it is important.  There are some experts & agencies that think even #4 buckshot is too small to reliably penetrate the 12-14" needed according to the FBI standards.

#4 Steel Shot is much smaller & lighter than #4 Buckshot, so if #4 buckshot is the minimum, then #4 Birdshot (Steel) is better for birds than badmen.

Thanks.

That's what I was thinking.

#4 buck would be the smallest I would consider but wasn't familiar with steel.

I'll use it for practice.

Have you ever shot anything with a shotgun at gunfighting(close quarters 15yds) range? Believe me, you will have NO problem stopping the threat using lead birdshot let alone #4 steel going probably 1500fps.  Shotguns, any load basically, wil stop/deter the threat in those ranges.  Then just take another shot if they dont get the point.

You're talking .130" diameter shot size.

Not great for HD.

It would work at close range.

Keep it handy until you get some buckshot.

If that was all I had and it was just for in-home defense I think it would work.

But, i wouldn't trust it to stop a rioter in the street from my porch.

It is not even rated for duck.

It has pictures of ducks all over the box.

Just wasn't sure if steel over lead.

I have what I need and only got it because the price was good.

I'll save it for last ditch or trading fodder.

Thanks guys.

Sell to a waterfowler, after you find some Buckshot.

I started working up a load yesterday for 12 gauge 2 3/4"- 1 - 1/4 oz #4 Lead.

I would use it for S/D if needed, but the rule of thumb was to use steel shot 2 sizes larger than lead.

So #4 steel has about the same ballistics and energy as #6 lead

I also "found" a 5 pound box of Hornady #4 buckshot

Good info.

Just so we are all on the same page.

Steel is birdshot.

Buckshot is lead

Birdshot is not for people unless you are very close then it acts like a slug.

#4 birdshot is 0.13"

#4 buckshot is 0.24"

Sorry about the duck shot size I was thinking geese, which is #2 and larger.

I shoot steel 4s at small teal and wood ducks in close, as said above it is slightly better than a sharp stick but very far from an ideal HD load.  Steel is alot lighter than lead and the rule of thumb for waterfowl hunting is use 2 sizes larger than a lead equivalent and I don't consider steel 4s a "good" duck load.

It's good for defense against small game. Not enough penetration for a human.

I don't care who you are that right there is funny!

If you choose to use it for practice, DO NOT shoot steel targets.  The steel shot will bounce back almost as fast as it strikes the target.  Lead shot flattens and absorbs most of the energy, though there is sometimes significant pieces that bounce back which can cut.  Steel shot deforms very little and acts like a spring.

Oh shit, good to know.

Yup I’ve been through this a lot on this forum. A lot of people don’t realize that the size is deferent between birdshot and buckshot of the same size. I understand as it’s certainly confusing. I’ll see if I’ve still got the chart I like and post it.

It’s also worth mentioning that steel usually penetrates less than lead of the same size because it’s lighter which is why people recommend to step up two sizes as mentioned above.

#4 bird shot should not be used for defense in steel or lead. #4 steel shot is a horrible choice for just about anything and only exists because of laws banning lead shot.

ETA
Attached File

I prefer #1 Buck.   Most efficient 12ga load.

If it functions 100% in your shotgun, then it is good to go.  IMO, home defense is up close and personal (within 20-30 feet), anything comes out of a 12 ga shotgun at that distance would really put the hurt on the intended target. If you have nothing else (as in buckshots), I would not be shy about using steelshots.

That's what I keep loaded up

I don't know what's funny about that, its a true statement. Being a duck hunter, I regularly see #2 steel shot fail to pass through. a 2lb duck at 20 yards. so I don't know haw a smaller shot with less mass could sufficiently penetrate a human at any range other than contact

There are definitely better choices but steel duck shot can be very lethal at close range.  Had a few terrible incidents last week: one hunter was accidentally shot in the leg and bled out in minutes and that crazy guy in Tennessee killed 2 hunters with 2 shots when he drove up to the blind.  Leg shot was only a few feet away but crazy guy killed first hunter at 15 feet and the second was closer.  Bad week for duck hunters!

He is correct. Go shoot a 4 or 5” diameter fence post with the steel shot at 10 yards. Then compare the farthest length you are likely to be shooting for defense and imagine the fence post is the bad guy that you may be shooting.

Anybody who tells you that an ounce or more of any type of 12 gauge shot (regardless of the shot size) isn’t going to work well for shooting someone in your house is a moron and you should ignore them.

I have to add that the shot may bounce back to you off of the wood post....

FWIW

Fiocchi has 12gauge 2 3/4" 27 Pellet #4 Buckshot Ammo that is nickel plated lead pellets .24" diameter.

Here is the description off of BulkAmmo.com website:



Sold 10 rounds to a box. I have a few hundred in my stash.

For sure. I've seen a dog get shot with birdshot at ~15 yards with birdshot in the head. It's eye popped out of its socket and it was twitching dead.

The only #4 steel shot I was able to find:

https://youtu.be/HF5N5tfMuX4?t=549

Not great.

If it gets desperate,  make wax slugs out of it...

I'd use it on small game...

I'd also use it to defend myself, if that's all I had, but we know that doesn't make it good.

I like #4 lead for squirrel/rabbit, and often it fails to fully penetrate. Usually caught by the far side skin. I wouldn't expect it to make it through the sternum of any great ape.

Good choice, but not sure how you define "efficient".  A good definition of "efficient" would also include pattern density, especially at 50 yards.  Wad design becomes hugely important.  Federal Flight Control,1B, 0B and 00B 12 gauge shells all have outstanding pattern density from improved cylinder choke tactical shotguns because the wad/shot cup stays longer with the shot before separating.

I can get all 9 00B 2-3/4" high velocity load pellets on a 12" square at a full 50 yards.  They make a 3 to 4" ragged hole at home defense distances - 15 yards.  You don't point with this stuff, you aim.  Good to have either rifle sights or a red dot.  With patterns this tight, I favor 00B because of the higher energy per pellet.

I won't deny that I may be a moron, but both of your posts are actually moronic based on my personal experience treating patients who were shot with birdshot at across the room distances.  Yes, it can be lethal and it often makes nasty looking wounds that may end up being lethal and getting shot or even shot at is usually enough to end a fight, but there are no guarantees that it will do any of those things including incapacitating them much less being lethal.  I've posted about at least two of them in the past including one who took two rounds from across a small living room (section 8 apartment) and still jumped up off the couch, ran to his room, grabbed his pistol and returned to the living room to return fire but the home invader had fled (drug deal situation).  Don't get me wrong, I actually have nothing against shotguns for defensive use and I've got one sitting near me, but it doesn't have birdshot of any variety in it.  If I were forced to use birdshot of some sort I would use a heavy  turkey load.  

Just as an aside, there's always the proverbial "golden BB" and I know of two deaths by air guns, one a pellet gun to a child's head and the other a BB that pierced the pericardium of an adult woman causing pericardial tamponade (I actually dispatched both of those calls about a year apart while I was on light duty for one and filling in on the other).  Doesn't mean I'm going to trust a BB gun either though.  


Fixed because autocorrect doesn't like medical terms.

Sorry but that's mostly false and a little right.

You DO NOT need buckshot to penetrate a human being at home defense distances.  Number 4 lead birdshot will easily perforate a human being at HD distances and create massive internal trauma.  

You are correct that steel shot is lighter and less dense and that steel shot is better on birds than bad guys however depending on the particular shotgun and how it patterns it can be a viable HD choice with the right setup.  

There are just way too many ballistic gel test videos out there to deny that only buckshot will work.

IIRC, Paul Harrell recently made a good video on the subject using both steel and lead birdshot.  The steel performed okay with one shotgun and not okay with a different gun with a different choke.  The #4 lead birdshot was definitely a better choice than the steel.

Make slugs by using wax or epoxy or cutting the shell... or sell it. That’s about all it’s good for if you don’t hunt birds.

Steel is shittier than lead and even lead birdshot is for birds.


Where are you in Ohio? What specific ammo is it?  How much did you get?  If you’re having trouble finding lead buckshot, maybe I can help you out with a trade if I can use what you got.

No, all sizes of birdshot fail to reliably and consistently penetrate deep enough to reach vital organs. That doesn't mean it never reaches deep enough, that doesn't mean it won't hurt, but it does mean that if you ever shoot a person in the upper torso with birdshot it will most likely not go deep enough to hit any vitals.

The point of self defense ammo is to neutralize the attacker. That means render them physically incapable of continuing what they were doing by shutting down their organs' ability to provide oxygen to the brain.

If you're relying on birdshot for self defense, you're relying on the assumption that your attacker will voluntarily decide to quit what they were doing because of all the pain and stress you caused them with the metal pellets that penetrated their skin. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. But there's nothing about the wounds caused by birdshot that makes your attacker physically unable to persist if they decide they want to persist.

Force of will can overcome the pain caused by being shot with birdshot. Force of will cannot overcome the absence of oxygen being supplied to the brain caused by being shot with buckshot.

No, this post is full of bad advice.

For anyone who comes onto this thread in the future, and who thinks that the pro-birdshot side of this discussion has a valid point, just hear me out.

Ballistic gel is a comparative medium. It's not designed to simulate the depth of human tissue. One inch of penetration in ballistics gel does not transfer to one inch of penetration in a human chest. All those videos you see on YouTube of people shooting birdshot at ballistic gel and penetrating 4 or 5 inches is not equivalent to 4 or 5 inches of penetration in human tissue.

For any projectile to reliably penetrate deep enough to hit the heart and lungs, it needs to penetrate a bare minimum of 12 inches deep in ballistic gel.

Yes, birdshot will easily perforate a human skin deep. But not heart and lungs deep. The whole point of choosing self defense ammo is to neutralize the attacker, which means rendering him physically unable to attack you, which means shutting down the ability of his organs to supply oxygen to his brain, making his body physically unable to persist regardless of what he personally decides he wants to do.

Using birdshot for home defense means relying on the assumption that your attacker will decide to voluntarily stop because of all the pain and fear you caused him. Now, maybe he will. Then again, maybe he won't. There's nothing about the wounds caused by birdshot that means your attacker physically can't persist if he decides he wants to persist. For example, if he's hopped up on drugs.

Lots of meth and determination can easily overcome the wounds caused by birdshot. But no amount of meth and determination is going to keep supplying oxygen to his brain after his heart and lungs have been penetrated by a proper self defense round, like buckshot.

Smallest shot size I would use would be BB. I came into a bunch of that in a 3" shell from Winchester, called the Blindside. 1450 fps IIRC of some 80 steel .18" pellets is gonna mess up anybody at 40 feet or less. That is my backup, of course. Main HD loadout is a Federal 00 LE load with their Flight-Control wadding. Very accurate in my 590, recoil is negligible to me with that load and gun combo.

I think before I used birdshot I'd grab a box of fishing sinkers that approximated the size of whatever buckshot I liked and reload the birdshot shells with that.  I've seen several videos on youtube where folks have done this and it appears to work well enough to get the job done- I've never tried it so I obviously won't recommend it.  With the China virus panic it's gotten hard to find bullet casting blocks but I saw bags of sinkers in my local Wally World today (of course they didn't have any of the clearanced priced hunting clothes in my size or leftover deer stands or gamecams that I went looking for; I despise going in that place but I'll take a $35 deer stand if I can find one).

In the frontier and mountain man days when the most common gun was still a musket and it was used for hunting everything, men typically bought bags of shot then cast their own balls/bullets* or "buckshot" balls.  Birdshot is the hardest to make since you need a shot tower but it's easy to cast it into larger sizes.  


*Since the pieces were handmade, they often came with bullet molds for that particular barrel.

Again it's been proven wax slugs and cut shells are NOT slugs.

Of course a step up from loose shot and harsh words, but it's still shot.

They never do send them through a 1" board then gel.

I'm always surprised cut shells do not create an overpressure situation. especially with a choke.

The shotshell hull is significantly wider than the shot and wad.

I've never done any gel testing with cut shells but I can tell you that they will tear a small pine sapling apart and they'll also go through both sides of of a car door from a 1960s VW Bug and a Ford Pinto (shooting junkers, never tried both at the same time) but they scatter shot all over the inside of the car after penetrating the door.  It was easy to pick shot out of the seats on the Pinto as it didn't penetrate the foam well at all.  Think of them as a giant Glasser Safety Slug- they dump most of their energy on impact and quickly break apart and with the individual pellets being so light (low mass) they quickly lose force (F = ma) and energy KE = 1/2 MV² and do not penetrate to the FBI's recommended depth in gel testing.*  The projectile begins losing velocity (negative acceleration) as soon as it leaves the barrel so without the mass, the pellets just don't have enough "oomph" (technical scientific term) to reliably penetrate to the depth that we need in order to expect consistent or predictable results.  It again becomes a case of yes, it may well work, in fact it probably will work if the stories of hunters using them to take deer are believed, and I have no reason to doubt that they haven't been used at times, but when it comes to hunting and especially self defense, we want reliable and repeatable results.  

Side note for the sake of safety, I would NOT recommend gluing the shot together, especially with something like a cyanoacrylate as you risk creating a non-deforming projectile and consequently an over-pressure situation.  Even with a cylinder bore, it is not designed to launch a projectile with the additional diameter of shell casing; at least if the shot is left loose it will allow the shell casing to compress somewhat as it squeezes through the barrel.  I also would not do any of this without a heavy walled barrel such as some of the 870 Police versions, the Mossberg 590s, etc.  

*Example; this guy is a member here.  

I'd imagine winchester put more effort into it, but some of their lead turkey loads use superglue (cyanoacrylate) as a buffer. The videos on it showed that the superglue actually shatters during firing, but stays around the shot, buffering it, so it doesn't dent, and giving better patterns. How much better, I can't say as I've never shot them, but IIRC my neighbor uses that product line (longbeard XLR?) in his turkey gun with excellent results. The winchester video said that it doesn't work on steel/tungsten because they're harder and won't dent each other.

I'd sooner risk busting down the shells and casting buck/slug from the shot and reloading them. Despite it being counter to everything I know about shotshell reloading safety.

Shoot birdshot at birds, shoot buckshot at bucks.

Learn something new every day- I don't turkey hunt (not enough patience) so I've never paid much attention to turkey loads.  I'd still be very leery of anything that held the shot together along with the increased projectile diameter from the hull. I was always a bit nervous shooting just regular cut shells and that was through a thicker walled Mossberg barrel.  If you opened the shells and put Superglue on just the shot in the shotcup I can see that probably being safer since you're not launching the entire end of the shell, but I'm no engineer, just another idiot in the internet.    

I definitely agree about recasting the lead and that was a point I made in one of my other responses.  There's a youtube channel that gets posted on here occasionally with an African guy who cast his own projectiles since they're limited to shot.  It might be worth looking into just for general knowledge. I've also seen where folks cast various size shot using slingshot molds so that would be an option for buckshot since shot molds seem to be hard to find right now as well.

Winchester has some neat loads out for turkey and waterfowl.

They also have rounded-off cube shot (steel), I think they call it "blindside". According to my neighbor, they pattern like dog-ass and against his better judgment, shot a goose at close(er) ranger with them, with patently horrible results. Think he said it took 2 shots then finished it off by hand, at a distance where typical round shot would've dropped it. I don't know what they're smoking to think that cubic shot would ever pattern worth a damn. Dude said it's all he could find at the time...

I've shot turkey with #2 steel with good results, but #4 lead would've done much better. Pattern density was trash, but at relatively close range, the larger pellets, that did hit, must've done the trick simply by making bigger holes.

Check out the Federal "flightstopper" pellets used in the "Prarie storm" line. The flight control wad probably makes up for it, but a belted-pellet on its own probably patterns just as bad as a cube. Both the belts and cubes should perform better terminally than round (for the same energy on impact), but with the lack of pattern density and much reduced energy in the real world, it's quite foolish.

At no point would I consider any bird shot to be effective on humans. Honestly, outside of 15 yards, I don't know if I'd even consider it "lethal force" any more. It's more like "less [than] lethal".

That said, outside heavily intoxicated assailants, a goose load is liable to change the tune of any one. As previously discussed, a mental stop is not ideal by any means.

Buck/slugs, or it's your funeral.