Comments on: Shotgun Shell Ballistics & Penetration

By: jake

jake — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 18:04:21 +0000

thanks for sharing your finding! this is great. for my own practice — and for what i’ll continue to recommend — careful field testing of patterns and kill effectiveness, lots of shooting practice, and holding off ‘cocky’ long shots, makes a good hunter and wounds less birds. this is great additional research for advanced waterfowlers.

By: Anthony Melton

Anthony Melton — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 01:44:59 +0000

I like your article and would also like to know if the tradeoff in payload for velocity is worth it. I think you did fail to argue the fact that while a BB at 600 fps does have more force (Mass x acceleration) than a #6, it also takes more force for a BB to penetrate than it does a #6. Due to surface area and friction. So friction in a duck and ballastic gellatin even if it is different by a small factor could have a major impact on your assumption.

By: Ian

Ian — Sat, 14 May 2011 07:09:00 +0000

Great article. Would love to see similar tables for lower velocity shell.

By: bill wieser

bill wieser — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 14:56:04 +0000

I would like to see pictures of shot coming out of the barrel and see the string of the shot and how it flies through the air. Thanks Bill

By: Marv McDonald

Marv McDonald — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 02:23:21 +0000

The 600 fps rule has no use here just like it is invalid for calculating effective kill distances across a range of shot sizes as I explained above.

The actual forward allowance or lead in feet is calculated by multiplying the bird speed in fps times the time in sec it takes the shot to reach the bird from the end of the muzzle. This actual forward allowance is the same for all angles relative to the shot path that the bird is flying, but the perceived forward allowance varies with that angle. The perceived lead also varies with the way you achieve it, e.g., sustained lead, swing through, etc. How much lead (in ft) you have to see to kill the bird boils down primarily to these variables – bird speed, time for the shot to reach the bird, how fast you are moving the gun relative to the bird, and tha angle the bird is flying relative to the shot flight path. While I won’t attempt to explain it here, if you use the number of perceived bird lengths as your lead, the angle no longer affects the lead (in perceived bird lengths).

Shotshell Ballistics software by Lowry and Garner may be used to calculate the time for the shot to reach the bird and many other things also – penetration in ballistic gelatin, velocity vs distance and time, ++. Unfortunately, it is no longer available.

By: Glenn Davis

Glenn Davis — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 18:47:57 +0000

I find your article very infromative and the conclusions track with my un-scientific observations over 55 years of waterfowl hunting. The information that I would like to find is a ballistic chart that shows the velocity decay rate over distance. From experience I have observed a siginificant performance improvement with the 1500fps loads over the earlier 1200fps loads. After hunting Argentina again this year with lead 5′s i find I still know that lead. With steel I do not have it figured out as precisely. I tend to figure lead in duck or goose lengths and shot velocoity will vary the lead enough to miss. Would the 600fps rule work well for this calculation or should it be faster? – Glenn

By: Roger Pyle

Roger Pyle — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:03:36 +0000

I have a Question. shooting a double barrelled 12ga what is the distance from the end of the barrell untill the bullets come together or (crisscross)

By: SoughSlayer

SoughSlayer — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:21:37 +0000

I’ve found in the type of hunting I do (mostly small sloughs) I have a much greater kill ratio with 1300 fps shot, reguardless of size. Perhaps it is the closer ranges I’m shooting at. Also, I recently watched a History Channel series on Special Forces Snipers who agreed that a slower bullet does more damage than a fast one, thus they try to match the range with the proper muzzle velocity of their rounds. If this phenom translates over to shell shot, it would reinforce my experience. Just the same, I have made very clean kills @ 70 yards using #4 – 1300 fps on teal. Enjoyed your article.

By: ydog

ydog — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:50:50 +0000

for pellet ballistics you can use chairgun.. its a freeware program for rifle and airgun folks. however you would assume a single round steel (or lead) bb instead at ranges of at most 70 yards.

all you would need is the ballistic coefficient of your respective bb which can be found anywhere or experimentally obtained (this factors size shape and density off of experimental values) and muzzle velocity. the outputs useful for this application would be velocity and possibly point of impact wrt distance.

By: C Dieker

C Dieker — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:05:25 +0000

Great article…

Similar to K Snead and LD Azevedo, for those of us who use steel shot for everything from small game to geese, is it possible to supply similar tables for 1300-1450 FPS steel loads?

Whatever revised table information you can provide is greatly appreciated.