Jim Taylor
SHOTGUNS
Friday, April 03, 2020, 07:34

Shotguns rule the middle ground. 10 to 50 yards.

My first recollections of shooting a shotgun involve my Dad and Grandpa's old Winchester '97 pump 12 gauge. Dad set up a 2 gallon can full of water and had me shoot it with a slug load from about 25 or 30 feet. While the gun kicked me plenty hard, I was more impressed by the water spout going 'way up in the air, and the water that came back over me. The old oil can was turned completely inside out. (This was back in the days when they were made out of steel). I liked the power of that old shotgun! When I was a bit older Dad used to have me stand in the back of the pickup or else ride on the hood of the car while he drove around the desert, and let me bust whatever happened to fly up in front of us. It was great fun. That old 97 Winchester is still in the family, still shooting.

The first shotgun of my own was a single-shot break-open .410. I liked the little gun as it did not kick much, but I quickly learned that you had to be exactly "on target" to do much with it. The power level was somewhat disappointing. We had a lot of buzzards over the place in those days and it was my goal to bring one down. Though I was only 12, I was by this time reloading. I tried some factory .410 loads and had no luck. I could hear the shot rattle off the big birds, but never got one down. One day I loaded up some shells with a 30 caliber ball, shot poured around it, and another ball and more shot. I poured hot wax over the whole mess and let it cool, then crimped it. I hid in some bushes and when an old buzzard tried coming down low I raised up and busted him. All he did was lose a few feathers, wobble a bit and fly on. I was sorely disappointed. I knew at that moment I needed more power!

One thing that was fun to do with the .410 was shoot .44-40 shells in it. They made neat "slug" loads and worked fairly well. They shot fairly hard. If I remember correctly I used Winchester-Western factory loads. I also shot some .30-30 factory loads in the .410 shotgun. If you pointed it straight up the bullet would go up about 30 feet or so. It would BOOM real loud, but since the bullet did not seal in the barrel it had no velocity. If the shell did not crack I then had a nice all-brass .410 shell for reloading.

While I have never gotten into trap or skeet shooting, I have always had a shotgun of some type around. Mainly they were used for guarding the property, especially at night, though I have done some hunting with them from time to time. The "gun of choice" has been the handgun. The old shotgun - of one type or another - has usually been around though. On the ranch they are handy and when I was gone my wife liked it as a "porch cleaner". I was out of the State once and about 2 in the morning a car pulled in our yard with the lights off. She went out on the porch with the shotgun at the ready and they left, without turning their lights on. Imagine that!

Somewhere along the way I acquired a 12 gauge double barrel Stevens. I cut the barrels to 18 1/4" and used it for a "house" gun. My wife liked it and kept it handy when I worked nights. She called it the "porch cleaner". One look down those short twin tubes was enough the make a believer out of anyone. I tried using the short gun for doves and found it to be OK for shots out to 20 yards. It was light and fast for the close-in shots, but I never used it much for hunting. I did use it some for clay pigeons, but mostly the other shooters complained about an "unfair advantage", whatever that was.

I ordered a round ball mold from Dixie Gun Works one summer that threw a .720" diameter ball. This was bore size for an unchoked 12 gauge. When I got the mold and cast some of the big balls out of wheelweights I found that my scales were not large enough to weigh them. Estimating as close as I could I figured the weight to be 530 gr. to 550 gr. using wheelweight lead. In working up a load, I decided on a "control" load to compare them against. I pulled the slug out of factory slug load and reloaded the ball in it. Firing into a 12" x 12" piece of Douglas Fir mine timber, the round ball came within one inch of exiting. It broke the back side out of the timber and blew splinters everywhere. It also kicked extremely hard.

I worked up a loading technique by cutting the "petals" off a Winchester poly wad and loading the round ball on top of that. The crimp would roll down inside and made a nice looking load. The powder charge was 28 gr. of Unique. Velocity on these busters was around 1200 fps. You could tell it when it went off. I tried shooting groups at 25 yards and 50 yards, and found the barrels to nearly converge at 75 yards. I did not fire more than 3 shots at each distance as the recoil of the light short gun really hurt. Groups at 50 yards were around 2" if I remember correctly. At 100 yards it was not hard to keep both barrels on a paper plate. If you could let them off without jerking the trigger. By this time I had put a set of home-made Express sights on the gun and found it greatly increased my hitting with the ball loads.

Camping in the woods one year, I had the short gun along for "camp protection" gun. One day I shot several of the ball loads at a 6" to 8" thick pine tree about 100 yards off. I could see the tree shake at each shot. Walking over I found all my shots had hit it, gone on through and split the poor tree nearly 2 feet in length.

I shot a number of these loads through various cars and never had one stop in a car. I'm sure they would from certain angles, but from side shots and frontal angling shots into the passenger compartment they never did.