Herter's Select Defense Double Ball Shotgun Ammo

before we get to today's presentation I have to take a moment for some shameless self-promotion on March 9th and 10th 2019 some of the crew and I will be doing a personal appearance at the gun show at the Polk County Fairgrounds in rickreall Oregon we'll have the table with some guns displayed a lot of people have asked about t-shirts we'll have some of the prototypes on hand we'd love to get some input and depending on what input we get we'll decide which ones will or won't go into production also a lot of people have asked about the cars we'll have those there too should be a lot of fun ok let's get to today's presentation [Music] I ride on the reins today so please bear with gunfire here in the background and today we're going to be shooting the herders select defense double round ball 12-gauge ammunition a viewer sent it to me and asked me to test it so here we are and let's start with a close-up of what this ammo looks like as I've said before there's a vast array of different types of shot shells on the market but these three are by far the most common birdshot there's many varieties but it's a high number of small pellets used for hunting birds or small game buckshot again many varieties but it's a much lower number of much larger pellets used for anti-personnel purposes are hunting larger game like deer hence the name buckshot slugs again many varieties but what is by far the most common is the rifled slug sometimes called a foster slug now the herders select defense ammunition is a 12-gauge shell loaded with 265 caliber lead spheres like the old punkin ball slugs and they're carried in this shot Cup as they go down the barrel now that we've seen what this ammunition looks like the question is how will it compare with conventional slugs and buckshot in terms of accuracy power and effectiveness well let's shoot some and see what we can learn I want to start with a discussion of accuracy and hit probability and I'm going to do a demonstration that I've done before forgive the redundancy but I'm going to do it again for the benefit of those who are just tuning in for the first time I've got a silhouette set up here with a 17 and 1/4 inch shooting C Center and I'm going to shoot it with my Mossberg model 500 which has a 20 inch improved cylinder bore barrel and the ammunition I'm going to start with is Winchester 12-gauge 2 and 3/4 inch double ought buck 9 pellet that's 933 caliber Spears and I'll shoot this target from 25 yards and let's see what kind of pattern we get I was aiming at the center of the target and we see just about all of the impacts are above that so that tells me that with this particular ammunition this shotgun patterns a little bit high but we see that of the nine pellets six are on the shoot and see Center two just above it and one barely missing the silhouette so eight out of nine pellets hitting the intended target would have been a very effective hit also the size of our pattern shows us that even if I'd been off target a little bit some of the pellets would still have been on the silhouette and it's that pattern spread that allows shotguns to increase your hit probability now let me paste up these shot holes and I'll go back and try this shot again from 50 yards and let's see what kind of results we get at 25 yards I've fired one shot that's nine pellets eight of which hit the intended target at 50 yards of fired two shots that's 18 pellets and we only got three on the shoot and see Center +2 peripheral hits so instead of eight out of nine we had five out of 18 because at 50 yards that pattern has spread out so much that it's significantly diminishing your hit probability in fact under some circumstances a pattern that big might start endangering things you didn't want to shoot so I'll go back and shoot from 50 yards again but this time I'll load with the Winchester 12-gauge two and three-quarter inch one ounce rifled slug and let's see what kind of hits I can get with the slugs have fired five rounds but they knocked off a couple of the pasties covering buckshot impacts so the five impacts were one two three four and five not necessarily in that order and this one that's off that's just me and again we see that my gun patterns a little bit high but that's me shooting a smoothbore shotgun with no sights just a bead at 50 yards offhand so I'd say that it looks like the slugs greatly enhancer hit probability at 50 yards over buckshot and that brings us to the topic of our herders select defense double ball ammunition will those 265 caliber projectiles spread out and act like buckshot and not be very effective or will they act like slugs except being twice as good because you have two projectiles instead of just one let me put up a new target and I'll shoot the herders ammunition from 50 yards and see what kind of results would get [Applause] with our herders select defense ammunition at 50 yards have fired five rounds and we see five impacts four on the target and one clear out here on the cardboard that seems odd since there were 10 projectiles but some of these impacts look like they're double impacts as if those two projectiles didn't spread out at all we also see that with the conventional slugs with the centre aim point I was a little high now I'm quite a bit lower different guns will have different results but this does show us at the point of impact that this ammunition might be very different than with other types of ammunition we also see that the group isn't nearly as good as with the conventional slugs so so far this ammo looks a little disappointing let's try this same drill of five rounds again at 25 yards and see what happens and there you have it five shots five impacts so it would appear that our second projectile has not started separating in the least although our accuracy at 25 yards seems to be a little better than at 50 but with no separation whatsoever of the two projectiles makes me ask the question why bother having a second projectile I've got a new target set up and seems we're having problem with separation of projectile from shot cup but would we get any better separation if we shot this ammunition through a shotgun with a full choke barrel well I've got my Rock Island armory VR 60 with the full choke tube inserted let's shoot the herders ammunition through this at 50 yards and see if we can get any different result I have to hold the cardboard up so the wind doesn't blow it over now I fired five rounds so that should have been ten projectiles and I count nine impacts on the target so it would appear that using a full choke shotgun can make a difference as far as projectile and shot cup separation but I also have to point out that that ammunition is labeled on the box select defense implying that it is intended to be used for home defense or personal protection purposes and although the VR 60 does have a full choke tube that I can install in the barrel most shotguns that people are using for those purposes do have cylinder bore or improved cylinder bore barrels now I want to discuss the power of this ammunition I've got the chronograph set up at five yards typically I shoot at seven but for this ammo I'm going to shoot at five and let's see what kind of velocities we get oh and reminder everybody this is an earplug case I wear earplugs with every shot I take 918 9:06 912 902 and 926 now let's see how that compares to conventional one ounce rifled slugs and now we'll shoot our winchester super x 12-gauge two and three-quarter inch one ounce rifled slug 1471 1543 1450 1474 and 1,500 now you notice that slight hiccup I don't think that's a malfunction as much as this is my cold hand not gripping the slide correctly but let's go crunch the numbers well I crunched the numbers and of course it comes with the caveats that chronographs don't always agree with each other in certain environmental factors including but not limited to elevation and ambient temperature can affect chronograph results I also have to point out the results I got were significantly less than the manufacturers advertised velocities printed on the box and there's some reasons for that such as chronographs don't always agree with each other and the test guns that these manufacturers used were probably different than the gun I used and manufacturers advertised velocities can sometimes be optimistic but all that having been said with the herders ammunition I got a mean velocity of 912 feet per second that's 288 feet per second less than the advertised velocity printed on the box with the Winchester ammunition I got a mean velocity of 1487 feet per second that's only 113 feet per second less than the 1600 they advertised and it's 575 feet per second more than the herders that's a lot more but how much more performance will we really get out of that much more velocity let's see if I can put that to the test now I've got three of our $2 concrete blocks and I'll shoot from ten yards with my Mossberg 500 with his 20 inch improve cylinder bore barrel and I'll shoot the target on your left with 12-gauge two and three-quarter inch double-aught buck nine pellet the target in the center with 12-gauge two and three quarter inch one ounce rifled slug and the target on the right with 12-gauge two and three-quarter inch herders select defense double ball ammunition and let's see how the results compare so when it comes to smashing concrete blocks it looked like our buckshot was a little less effective but I couldn't see much difference between the slugs and the double ball ammunition let's try something else in shooting the concrete blocks we saw that there was very little difference in the effectiveness between the 1 ounce slug and a herders double ball ammunition so we can take it as axiomatic that if we shot the meet target with those same two munitions that we would have very little difference probably not enough for us to see but we're going to shoot the meet target in and wait for no other reason than because it's fun and for those who haven't seen it before the meet target is leather jacket skin followed by pork steak pectorals pork ribs a bag of oranges to simulate lung tissue more pork ribs on the back four layers a t-shirt on the front four layers on the back and the whole thing followed by the new and improved high-tech police bullet stop and I'm going to shoot from 7 yards with Mossberg 590 shotgun and I'll start with the Winchester 12-gauge two and three-quarter inch one ounce rifled slug it's important to note that I said I was starting with the 1 ounce rifled slug I didn't I actually shot this target with the hurt her select defense double ball ammunition and the results we got were a big hole in our pork chop pectoral big hole and our ribs on the front another big hole in the ribs on the back and would you believe it where the projectile hit a rib shattered it but the really interesting thing is that these two projectiles still acting as one at this point went through every single layer of fleece and several feet into the snow behind me and I couldn't find the projectile so the real result we have here is basically a 65 caliber hole through our meat target and a great deal of penetration so I'll put together a new meat target and we'll try this again and this time I really will shoot it with our Winchester one ounce rifled slug while our pork steak pectoral has a big hole in it there's the hole in the ribs on the front of the target our our orange lung tissue is just devastated there's a big hole in the ribs on the back of the target and would you believe that slug was stopped by the first layer of fleece let me show you what's left of it and here's the major fragments of that 12-gauge slug now there's one more thing to add and that is that although I don't consider it necessary where I Pro when shooting paper targets are using the coronagraph I most certainly do wear safety glasses when shooting concrete blocks or the meat target I just usually take them off before I get back on camera now that having been said what's the takeaway from all of this today well when using the coronagraph we saw that the herders select defense double ball ammunition had significantly lower velocity than our conventional one ounce slug it also seemed to have significantly less accuracy when shooting it at 50 yards and what we really saw was that those two projectiles had trouble separating from the shot cup and it performed really poorly in our improved cylinder bore barrel although using a full choke shotgun seemed to alleviate that problem a little bit now when we shot the concrete blocks it seemed to perform pretty well but when shooting the meat target although it had a great deal of penetration the effectiveness on the target itself paled in comparison to the conventional one ounce foster slug so it looks like the bottom line is if you're shooting at just the right range at just the right target with just the right shotgun there might be some applications for this double ball ammunition but for the most part you'd probably be a lot better off to just stick to a conventional one ounce foster slug so as always don't try this at home I'm what you call a professional and thanks for watching the herders select defense double ball ammunition video [Music]

Channel: Paul Harrell

Views: 143,948

Rating: 4.9870334 out of 5

Keywords: paul harrell, paul harrell shotgun, herter's double ball shotgun ammo, double ball ammo, double ball shotgun ammo, double ball shotgun, paul harrell double ball ammo

Id: k9M9YBmIbLs

Length: 16min 13sec (973 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 23 2019