I know little about shotshell reloading.

It seems like Winchester AA and Remington Gun Club are the two most common hulls for reloading. Is that true?

I want to start loading buck and slugs once components are available again. Next time I buy bulk target shells I might as well buy something easily reloadable, and I would prefer a hull with the most data.

Slugs & Buckshot in Winchester & Remington hulls can be a real tight fit and very frustrating for a new reloader.

A Cheddite, Rio, Federal Gold Medal or Fiocchi Hull are a much better option.

Most of your bulk cheap shells from Europe are Cheddite hulls, there is tons of load data for them. I would just buy the cheapest foreign shells I could. I reload 12 gauge and I reload cheddite hulls all the time.

I'd suggest getting Ballistic Products Inc. slug and buckshot manuals. They list and sell everything you need but most of their manuals loads use their hulls and wads. I had the best luck with Federal Gold Medal straight walled hulls. Tapered walled hulls are hard to fit the buckshot in and get a good crimp. Also a finer grained powder leaves more room rather than a bulkier flaked powder. Not worth the trouble for me to load buckshot and I don't see enough savings? Look into BPI's website for info.

two things i learned when i was reloading shotgun hulls  for non slug/buckshot loads

1). Compressed form is better then the rolled paper hulls - due to the paper can become dislodged in the barrel after repeated reloading.  

2). How many times can i reload the hull...  

I know win AA changed towards the end of my reloading time with shotguns and i dont know if they were lasting as long with the new design...

I always tried to find gun club hulls cheap and lasted just as long as the original win AA hulls..

If the two items above you don't care about than it really doesn't matter which ones you go with..


Slugs/buckshot

For slug loads think about the roll crimp vs non roll crimp.. need to have another tool to roll crimp or purchase a mec reloader that does the roll crimp since most reloaders just do the star crimp only..

I had good luck with the federal cases for slug/buckshot .. but i didn't care if i lost them after shooting them since it was using them for deer hunting.

I didn't shoot enough of either to justify keeping the shotgun reloading..

The Remington hulls last longer in my experience.  For a while, Win AA hulls would split on the first firing.

I was never pushing max, usually a handicap load, so I didn't get overly obsessive about the data.

My MEC was very good about crushing the thin cheap hulls, so I just trashed them.