Bird Shot in your Home Defense Shotgun.

I were out on the ranch today so bear with gunfire you hear in the background bird shot in your home defense shotgun well before I even go there let me say two things first a while ago I did a couple of video presentations entitled introduction to shotguns and shotguns don't suck for home defense so today in the interest of brevity and to avoid redundancy I'm going to give some really brief explanations of a couple of things and if you'd like a more in-depth explanation you can watch either of those videos secondly the idea of choosing a shotgun as your home defense gun is in itself debatable that's why you see things like videos called shotgun suck and why I made a video entitled shotguns don't suck for home defense so for today we're going to approach this from the standpoint that a shotgun is what you're going with so that having been said let's get to it the question is birdshot a viable option with which to load your home defense shotgun well to answer that question requires that we ask a few other questions the first one being what is birdshot well let me show you now this is buckshot and that's just a few big pellets as opposed to birdshot which is lots of little pellets this is number four birdshot and this is number eight which you can see is a lot smaller the bigger the number the smaller the projectile so now that we know what birdshot is the next question is why why would you select birdshot in your home defense shotgun buckshot is made to shoot large game like deer that's why it's called buckshot birdshot is made to shoot small game squirrels rabbits and birds so why would you put birdshot in your home defense shotgun there's actually quite a few reasons but the primary reason is because you believe that it will penetrate less through common building materials like sheetrock plywood household appliances whatever and therefore with less tendency for over penetration it has less potential danger to innocent bystanders well that brings us to our two big questions that we really have to answer one is that true does birdshot penetrate less than buckshot through common building materials and two will birdshot give you the desired effect on the intended target well I've got some birdshot let's shoot it and see if we can shed any light on that if you've seen our shotguns don't suck for home defense video you've seen this setup before we have three walls set up six feet apart we have to condense the distances a little bit to fit it all on the range you've got a two by four frame half-inch sheetrock on each side another two by four frame would happen sheetrock on each side there are no studs in here most houses have studs set up on 16-inch Center and if you shoot through that wall you got about a 1 in 10 chance of hitting a 2x4 stud so we've just removed that extraneous variable oh and these are just get the whole thing to fall over our exterior wall is sheetrock on the inside half inch and then on the outside half inch plywood and then some cheap particle board siding and then down here we've got our innocent bystanders now again if you've seen our shotguns don't suck for home defense video you know that big buckshot like double lot will go through this smaller buckshot like number three or number four won't but it's only stopped by the exterior wall it'll go through the sheetrock side of the exterior wall so let's go back to shoot this with some birdshot and see how that compares so we're loaded with 12-gauge two and three-quarter inch one and one eighth ounce of number eight birdshot and I'm going to shoot from the prone so later I can shoot from the kneeling and not shoot through the same holes so you see that that birdshot goes through our first interior wall but not through our second interior wall so it penetrates a lot less than buckshot does however one in 1/8 ounce of number 8 birdshot is a fairly light 12-gauge load let's try a heavier 12-gauge load and see if we get any different results well you can see when we go to the bigger birdshot it easily went through both interior walls but this sheetrock the interior of our exterior wall it had just about no energy left when it got here you can see a lot of holes here but none of these actually go through the sheetrock some of them are stuck kind of halfway in you can feel the lump of the pellet and a lot of them just hit and bounced out there's quite a few pellets laying right here so although this did a lot more than the number 8 birdshot it still pales in comparison to the penetration of buckshot and just to illustrate that I'll reload with double-aught buck and shoot through this wall and see what happens and there you have it the big buckshot like double lot goes through as you saw in the other video the smaller buck shots like number 3 and number 4 don't and as you make the transition to birdshot it goes through even less and when you get to the really small birdshot like number 8 it goes through even less so our first question does birdshot reduced potential for over penetration and therefore reduce the danger Dinis applies damage and the answer is absolutely yes it does but our second question will birdshot especially that smaller birdshot deliver the desired effect on the intended target that's a little harder to illustrate but we'll give it a try so at typical home defense distances and bird shot get the desired effect against the intended target well we've got our favorite target soda jugs and I'm back to the one and 1/8000 number eight shot let's shoot these and see what happened well we proved that was fun but let's try something else that might be a little more definitive so what is a good way to test whether or not at close range birdshot can give you the desired effect on the intended target well we can shoot soda bottles water jugs in ballistic gel and they tell us what they tell us but probably the only real definitive test would be if you got a large animal like a deer and then somehow got it smoked meth and then took it out and shot it with a shotgun well I'm not going to do that but let's see what I can do I've got a ratty old hoodie sweatshirt some duct tape a couple of hearts I got them from the butcher shop not the coroner some pork steaks it's important ribs some frankfurters now in case you didn't know this the skin of most hotdogs is made of an intestine and the contents of most hotdogs probably does pretty well simulate the contents of your intestines yeah and some margarine this will simulate that fat layer we all claim we don't have so let me see if I can put all this stuff together into a target that will tell us something so to start with what I've built here is I've got a pork steak which will simulate a pepper also behind that pork ribs and behind that heart now it's a beef heart but I think we'll be okay and then we'll cover that with our foot and I know that's not four layers of denim but it is there's plenty and of course we all know that hoodlums wear hoodies no that's not where the term put them or hoodie came from anyway we'll also take on these repair centers find the center of our target put that there in about the center so I know the right spot to shoot and we'll go back five yards and shoot it with shotgun now we shot those soda jugs with 12 gauge 1 and 1/8 ounce of the number 8 shot to shoot this meat target I'm going to use the stand gun it's a single shot Iver Johnson 28 gauge this particular load has 3/4 ounce of number 9 shot you can get more powerful ammunition than this but the reason I'm going to use this for this particular target is because this combination of gun and ammunition happens to be the least powerful shotgun I own how'd we do well peeled off all our duct tape unwrapped our heart and our first layer our steak is just pulverized the ribs they stopped most of the pellet some got through and our heart has about eight or ten pellets in it so is that an effective hit you be the judge but remember that's about the lowest powered shotgun I can get so let me make up another one of these and we'll go back and shoot that again with a more powerful shotgun so with the 28 gauge that was marginal now let's go back to the 12-gauge we've got the exact same steak ribs heart targets set up under here and where the 12-gauge we're going back to the 1 and 1 8 ounce of number 8 shot which although more powerful than the 28 is still as 12-gauge ammo goes a pretty light load well before we go dissect our heart I wanted to show you this a lot of the pellets went clear through the heart and into the sheetrock wall now none of them came out the other side so still your wall stopped it but quite a few of the pellets achieved full penetration now let's go dissect our heart and see how that looks well we've got this all torn apart and of course our steak is polarized the ribs didn't stop very many pellets at all and our heart is riddled with shock pellets and pellet holes again that 12-gauge round although more powerful than the 28 is really not all that powerful as 12-gauge rounds go but even with a mediocre round you can see pretty good effect with the birdshot so let me generate one more of these targets and we'll shoot a really powerful 12-gauge birdshot round well I'm out of ribs so we're going to have to make our next shot at gunshot so I got our boxes of margarine actually two thicknesses of them and then some pork steaks to simulate an abdominal muscle wall and then our intestines so let's hang this up and we'll shoot it with a more powerful 12-gauge level so we got our gut shot target set up and I had to fold the sleeve of the hoodie across here to get our layers back and what I'm going to shoot it with is federal 12-gauge three inch Magnum two ounces of number six led birdshot that is not the most powerful 12-gauge birdshot load you can get but it's getting pretty close and we'll shoot from five yards and there's the result pulverized our target blew a big hole in our wall now some of the pellets did go to the next wall but all they did was hit and bounced off after going through our target in this wall they had virtually no power level so what does all this tell us well does birdshot as opposed to buckshot reduce the potential for over penetration therefore reduce the potential for danger innocent bystanders yes but is birdshot going to give you the desired effect on the intended target if you use a fairly powerful birdshot load yes so the bottom-line question is birdshot a viable option in your home defense shotgun and I would say again if you use a fairly powerful birdshot load absolutely yes it is so as always don't try this at home I'm what you call a professional and thanks for watching the birdshot vs. buckshot video

Channel: Paul Harrell

Views: 853,806

Rating: 4.936801 out of 5

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Id: zaR1EVybUgc

Length: 12min 47sec (767 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 28 2016