Looks like my last bought inexpensive Gun Club 1 1/8 7.5 have another purpose . I like that.

 

Home defense is about what is in your face! If you need something bigger then 7.5 ? Is it in your face? What is happening down range that you should be worried about that 7.5 shot will not bother?

 

I've seen several people hit with bird shot at close range and not live to tell about it.

 

 

I have posted about it before when the subject came up, but I'll never use birdshot for HD.
When I was on the volunteer rescue squad, we got a call to go to old farm house out in the country, an elderly woman lived there alone and practically everybody knew her. Anyway some meth head tried to break into her house, it was in the middle of the winter and he was wearing an old Navy pea coat and a heavy sweatshirt under it. When we got there he was laying in the front hallway bleeding quite a bit but still alive. The county deputy arrived about the same time and got the story from the woman, she had dumped a couple of rounds of birdshot into him from about 20 feet away. We cut away the pea coat and sweatshirt, and it looked like she hit him with most of it, his chest looked like fresh hamburger. What shot that was still stuck in him was about a 1/4" deep, and he was probably going to spend the rest of the night in the ER while they picked it out of him. Since it's just me and the wife in the house now, I keep some #4s in the house gun.

 

Me either. A classmate of mine decided to end it all right after graduation, with an 870 and birdshot load under the chin. He lived for an agonizing two weeks without a face before he died. Make mine buck or slug, or both. I have 3 Remington '0' Buck and two Winchester PDX-1 with 1 oz. slug and 3 00 Buck pellets in them in my Ithaca 37.

 

Notice article is almost 4 years old, Many home defense advocates and instructors suggest bird shot for inside home use. There is a video on YouTube that shows bird shot penetrating a pine board at room distance, leaving a hole larger than any 45 would leave.

 

Lethal loads of buckshot if you use a shotgun or the best lethal ammo in a pistol or rifle is best for home defense in my opinion. If someone breaks into your home you need defensive capability as good or better than they may bring. Birdshot is not effective in any firefight I would want to have with an intruder!

 

 

A watermelon and a board is not human flesh.
I used a watermelon and trap loads to demonstrate lethality to my kids because it makes an impression, but terminal ballistics on a human, clothed or even unclothed, is much more complicated than terminal ballistics on a watermelon.
My grandma doesn't sleep anywhere where a shotgun can reach her.

All this is moot, anyway, as far as the entropy household is concerned, because the first tier defense weapon is a .223 AR. No, they do not buzz through everything, even 55 gr. FMJ. I however, use 62 gr. OTM and 55 gr. V-Max. The terminal ballistics on humans is just short of a grenade going off inside them. (Based on deer and coyotes harvested with them, they have a very similar anatomy to a human, certainly more than a watermelon,) The Ithaca 37 is what I'd grab if SWMBO already had the AR. I also have 2 .45 ACP's close at hand.

 

While doing a 13yd POI test, my 1200fps, #7.5 shot, put a hole through 2 pieces of 1/2" fir plywood which were separated by 3-1/2" (2x4 width). ...That was with a full choke.

Don't think I'd be shooting that far inside my house. ....Body armor may be effective?

 

Yes, body armor prevents penetration of almost all shotgun rounds, especially birdshot. Gives a helluva trauma bruise, and I suspect a slug hitting the sternum or a rib might crack bone.

Most HD shotguns do not have full chokes, usually cylinder, the TAC-13 and 14 have Modified. Nominal spread from a cylinder choke is 1" to 1 yard. So measure out your longest HD shot, (mine is 8 yards) and then realize the shot column is no longer one almost solid projectile, but a bunch of little individual projectiles each with a tiny impact energy. This is why birdshot is not a good choice for antipersonnel use. VA Trap's story bears out what the ME tech I shoot with observed. She doesn't get many birdshot victims in the morgue, (zero) they go to the Emergency Room, often ambulatory. Which brings me to another point. If it were better, the military would use it. They use 00 Buck, and frangibles, but for breaching only.

 

Nice cast. Even better when the fish are deceived into thinking in came from someone else.

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Ernest Hemingway, in The Green Hills of Africa, describes going into the brush after a wounded leopard. His preferred gun and load were a 12-gauge Model 12 pump with a short barrel and 1 1/8 oz. of # 8 shot. When it came to lion, his professional guide preferred a .557 nitro express double-barreled rifle.

 

The video in case you missed it, was about penetration through doors and walls, not so much what was done to a watermelon. I can guarantee you if you shoot a load of bird shot in an average size room, in the neck or head of a person you will kill them, but you will have less chance of the bird shot exiting though a door or wall and injure or kill a person on the other side of it

 

Yes, it killed my schoolmate, but it took two weeks for him to die. And that was at contact distance. I don't think you can guarantee it will kill them fast, but the probability is high. I personally am interested in neutralizing the threat to me as fast as possible. This may result in the death of the interloper, but getting them to cease their attack is my objective. Unless they have take SWMBO hostage, I'll stick with buck for the first round, and slug (+ 3 00 Buck) for my second; I can eject the buck and use the slug in that case. I do have training in such situations, though it was with MP5SD3's.

The main issue with birdshot, and your salient point, is that it does not have penetration. There is a reason the FBI does it's penetration tests to 12"; this is the mean width of the human torso. (Some of us are thicker than that, some smaller.) Bird shot loses penetration fast as it travels forward, because it is not one .67 cal. mass of 1 1/8 oz., but 350 .095 dia. individual pellets whose cumulative penetration would equal a slug, however multiple round penetration is measured concurrently- each pellet has 3.04 ft/lbs. of energy at ten yards. That's 1064 ft. lbs., but again that's total energy, each projectile still has 3.04 ft. lbs. Compare that to a 1 oz. Foster slug at 2363 ft/lbs. Or 00 Buck at 1547 ft/lbs. That gives each of the 9 pellets just under 172 ft/lbs. , a medium pistol round equivalent each. This is why it is often said firing a round of 00 Buck is like firing a burst from an SMG, but instantaneously. Each of the 9 projectiles can kill, depending where it hits, not true for the birshot round, unless your invader is a pheasant.

The cumulative effect of 305 lightly penetrating pellets will cause significant surface damage, and some subcutaneous damage. Your idea of shooting the neck makes sense, as this target may kill, and will most likely cause your attacker to retreat if it does not. This is assuming he is not on certain drugs, or drunk. Then all bets are off, and I want definitive fight stopping power. The old Ranger/SF maxim always applies; "If you're in a fair fight, your tactics suck." I want every advantage I can get.

Make mine buck & slug. I know Cooper's Fourth Rule, and follow it.

 

The Box O' Truth #3 - The Shotgun Meets the Box...

I didn't want to slight the shotgun lovers by not carefully researching what a shotgun will do as far as penetration. The shotgun is a Mossberg Maverick, 12 Gauge, with a 19.5" barrel, no choke. Typical of "combat" shotgun dimensions. The Box O' Truth is loaded with 12 sheets of 5/8"...

www.theboxotruth.com

Good test results above.

Just my wife and I, so we have loaded buckshot, buckshot, slug, buckshot, buckshot near all entry doors.

I do have one shotgun in the garage with #6 for coyote, I would not hesitate to "shoot what I brung" and to not stop until the threat stops.

 

The thing about an intruder you engage is they could be shooting back at you and moving. He will not be standing there waiting for you to shoot him with your load of bird shot. You better have something that will be effective going through doors and walls if you have a fire fight going on.

 

Agreed Ralph and people should practice shooting from the hip and one handed with their shotgun it could come in handy.


quoted for the box of truth:

Unless you expect to be attacked by little birds, do not use birdshot. Use 00 Buck. It will do the job.

But doesn’t 00 Buck penetrate too much in interior walls to be a “safe” load in a home?
Yes, it does penetrate a lot. But any load that is going to be effective will need to penetrate walls to have enough power to penetrate bad guys. If our only concern was to be sure we didn’t penetrate walls, we would use BB guns. However, BB guns will not stop bad guys.

Therefore, we must use loads that will STOP bad guys, and this means that they will also penetrate walls. So, be sure you hit the bad guy and do not shoot into walls where loved ones are on the other side.

 

My wife’s office, she likes the bandolier. If the door is closed and you’re an intruder I would not advise opening the door on her. She has a panic button for the police in there, but they are usually five plus minutes away.

 

NO weapon is of any use to you if you hesitate to use it....its only use is to have the bad guy use it on you..YOU LOOSE.....7 1/2s or 8s or buck, or slug, etc is useless unless YOU use it first......m

 

My home defense loads have always been standard 2 3/4" - 1 1/4 oz #4 or #6 same loads that I use for pheasant, thank God I have never had to use them but I'm sure they would get a buglers attention in a hurry.

 

Especially if he was playing TAPS. Hard to get your lips right with a gaggle of sixes in your gut.

 

Being I am a State certified police firearms instructor, you are not telling me anything new. The op was about bird shot, I was staying on topic and not arguing one size pellet vs another. Use whatever you want.

When I was growing up in the early 1950‘s in NW Indiana, my parents owned a multiplex with 3 units. Ours was in front, a unit in the rear and another overhead. My dad rented out the top and rear unit to friends and family. Out unit was two bedroom. I shared one bedroom with two sisters, I had a top bunk and two sisters slept in the bottom. The bunkbed was against a wall and on there other side of that wall was a hallway which had a side entrance from the outside. Entrance to the rear unit and a backdoor to our unit was accessed from that hallway.

The renter in the rear unit was a woman who lived alone and had a boyfriend. One day, they had some words and she told him they were through. That night he came back, mad as hell and threatened to break in is she did not let him in. The woman had a shotgun, which she fired her shotgun through the entrance door when the boyfriend pounded on her door.

The shotgun blast blew off through the door messed up the door handle and lock. Boy friend was not hit, but beat feet out of there. Fortunately for my sisters sleeping in the lower bunk we’re not hurt because the bird shot the woman used in her shotgun did not penetrate the wall on the other side of the door the woman shot through. If the woman had used buckshot like some of you cowboys suggest, I am sure both my sisters would not have made it,

 

#4 Copper plated is my favorite Turkey and Pheasant load. I always have some around, I figured that would hold someone off.

 

I wouldn’t use birdshot for SD but that’s just my opinion.


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Unless you really pissed someone off, a blank would probably be lethal enuf to to get the threat out of the house. Most burglars are looking for an easy target and don’t want to lose their life for a couple hundred buckets either. But, if you have a bounty on your head you might think of something more lethal.
With that being said, I don’t have blanks in any of my guns.

 

It would be a mistake to believe criminals think like law abiding citizens. If they did, they wouldn't be criminals. Using a blank (even as a first shot) for home defense is akin to playing Russian roulette.

 

There also a misconception, break in’s and home invasions occur at night while people are sleeping. True, there are some that do. The majority of breaking and entering occur in the daytime when it is believed, no one is home.