Having a short barrel doesn’t mean the pattern will be huge

Monday, May 7th, 2018

Since we were just discussing the maximum effective range of buckshot, Greg Ellifritz’s latest post, on buckshot patterning in a short-barreled shotgun, caught my attention:

I recently got my Federal paperwork back from the creation of a short-barreled shotgun. I have an old HK Benelli M-1 that I equipped with a 14″ barrel and SureFire forend. I took it out to shoot it last weekend for the first time.

With such a really short barrel, you would expect a huge pattern, right? Wrong.

Pattern is more a function of the type of choke the shotgun has than its barrel length. In fact, using buckshot loads that are not buffered or encased in a shot cup, patterns will get LARGER as the barrel length increases. The longer the barrel, the more likely that the pellets hit the inside of the barrel or each other while traveling down the barrel of the gun. Those strikes deform the each of the pellets and cause them to fly erratically, leading to a larger overall spread. Having a short barrel doesn’t mean the pattern will be huge.

Another factor of patterning size is the manufacturer of the ammunition. Not all 00 buckshot is equal. Rounds with a specialized shot cup (Federal Flight Control, Hornady TAP/Critical Defense) will shoot the tightest pattern. “Buffered” buckshot will shoot larger patterns. Unbuffered buckshot will create the largest pattern. In general, the cheaper the round, the larger and more inconsistent the pattern.

For an idea about this variability, take a look at the target below. I shot four different types of 00 Buck through the 14″ Benelli at a distance of 30 feet. There was a tremendous variation.

Buckshot Patterns from 14-Inch Cylinder Bore at 30 Feet

  • The Remington 00 Buck shot a pattern about 10″ in diameter
  • The Speer Low Recoil 00 Buck shot a pattern about 6″ in diameter
  • The Federal 00 Buck shot a pattern about 7″ in diameter
  • The Hornady TAP Magnum 00 Buck shot a pattern less than 3″ in diameter.

There is also a myth that 00 Buckshot spreads approximately one inch per yard of travel. This may be close to true with very cheap buckshot fired out of a cylinder bore. Shotguns that have a choke or rounds that use a specialty shot cup shoot groups much tighter than this standard formula suggests.

Comments

  1. Kirk says:

    Those are the sorts of patterns I get out of my own M1 Benelli with the standard barrel, FWIW.

  2. Married Worker says:

    Did this myth get started with Doom?

    The largest “real” (read: “contrived”) shotgun spread I’ve ever heard of comes from using a rifled slug barrel with shot, and even that only gave a spread of under 2.5 inches per yard:

    https://www.theboxotruth.com/the-box-o-truth-43-buckshot-in-a-rifled-shotgun-barrel/

    But the original Doom shotgun had a spread that averaged 6 degrees (over 3.5″ per yard) and could go up to 10 (over 6″ per yard):

    http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Shotgun

    And some later installments went completely insane: Doom 3 single player cranked the spread up to 22 degrees (nearly 14″ per yard!)

    http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Shotgun_(Doom_3)

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