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sorerotators
Well-known member
Read this in Death in the Dark Continent by Peter Capstick. One of my favorite writers. He makes very goods arguements as to superior loads...discuss. And ya i'm typing this all out. Hope you appreciate it. 
"I would like to mention one very important factor in choosing a buckshot load for dangerous game, and that concerns shot size selection. Most people would automatically pick 00 buck simply becuause it's so well know through TV westerns. In fact, the 12-pellet 12-gauge "baby magnum" load of 00 is considerably inferior to the same maximum powder loading of small NO. 1 buckshot in the same shell. The difference lies in the simple and astonishingly obvious fact that at .33 caliber, 00 buck is so large in the shell that there is much wasted space that could otherwise be filled with lead if the bearing surfaces of the big, round pellets didn't have to come into contact with each other. But they must. No. 1 buck is .30 caliber, only ten percent less in diameter than 00 buck and but thirteen grains per pellet lighter. However, because of the way the pellet mass fits into the shotshell, the same shell can fire an incredible seventy-five percent more pellets than the Magnum 00 load! What this means is that when you need help in a big way, you're launching eight hundred grains of lead at better than three thousand foot-pounds at the muzzle with No. 1 buck compared with a bit over six hundred grains and not quite twenty-four hundred foot-pounds with the 00 buck. If you don't reckon that can make a significant difference, you've never had something try to eat you.
One might also bear in mind that eight hundred grains of lead in a swarm has the individual pellet impact area of an umbrella, for even though still in a solid mass at more or less ten yards, it covers a circular saturation point of about a 7-inch circle. Eight hundred grains, remember, equals a .458 PLUS a .375 at point blank, and you've got two barrels of the stuff, minimum."
Discuss!
"I would like to mention one very important factor in choosing a buckshot load for dangerous game, and that concerns shot size selection. Most people would automatically pick 00 buck simply becuause it's so well know through TV westerns. In fact, the 12-pellet 12-gauge "baby magnum" load of 00 is considerably inferior to the same maximum powder loading of small NO. 1 buckshot in the same shell. The difference lies in the simple and astonishingly obvious fact that at .33 caliber, 00 buck is so large in the shell that there is much wasted space that could otherwise be filled with lead if the bearing surfaces of the big, round pellets didn't have to come into contact with each other. But they must. No. 1 buck is .30 caliber, only ten percent less in diameter than 00 buck and but thirteen grains per pellet lighter. However, because of the way the pellet mass fits into the shotshell, the same shell can fire an incredible seventy-five percent more pellets than the Magnum 00 load! What this means is that when you need help in a big way, you're launching eight hundred grains of lead at better than three thousand foot-pounds at the muzzle with No. 1 buck compared with a bit over six hundred grains and not quite twenty-four hundred foot-pounds with the 00 buck. If you don't reckon that can make a significant difference, you've never had something try to eat you.
One might also bear in mind that eight hundred grains of lead in a swarm has the individual pellet impact area of an umbrella, for even though still in a solid mass at more or less ten yards, it covers a circular saturation point of about a 7-inch circle. Eight hundred grains, remember, equals a .458 PLUS a .375 at point blank, and you've got two barrels of the stuff, minimum."
Discuss!
