Shotgun load...Fact or Fiction?

[scout34]

I was reading the book,Valdez is Coming by Elmore Leonard and there is a neat bit in there about a modification to the protagonist's ammunition.

He has a sawn off Remington 10ga, and he modifies his shells by pouring beef tallow onto the shot and then recrimping.  In the story he claims it lets him get an almost solid shot pattern out to 50yds.

Is this accurate?  Was this actually done?

Over at another shotgun forum, one guy talked about his dad pouring paraffin onto the shot and it would blow a hole through a 2x12 at 75yds.

Comments?

[Graybeard]

Let's look at it logically for a moment.

Would a slug do the things they are claiming? If not they how could birdshot do it regardless of how well it was stuck together?

Now will fat or wax hold the shot in a solid mass once it leaves the wad? Maybe for a few feet or even yards but no more. I doubt it would gain you even 5 yards of tighter pattern. What it likely would do is blow your pattern to hell and gone so the range would in effect be reduced if used as a shotgun is supposed to be used. If you need slugs use slugs if not then don't mess with the shot charge.

I've heard of folks trying all sorts of weird contoctions to try to hold the shot together longer at turkey shoots for money. In fact a friend of mine experimented with a bunch of them to see if it might help him win a higher percentage of the time. He never found anything he could add that helped. The one thing that contributed to a more dense pattern more than any other was slowing the shot down. To that effect he had another barrel added to his to make it almost 60" long and drilled holes all up and down the barrel like ported barrels only he had hundreds of holes. It actually seemed to help strangelly enough. They were using factory ammo provided by the shoot promoters so wasn't allowed to mess with the shells only their guns.

[scout34]

I've seen those barrel extensions for sale.  Some folks swear by them.

I've heard of guys crimping split shot onto monofiliment and loading it to improve their patterns at long range.

I thought the idea sounded kind of neat, like a super Glaser.

Fiction nonetheless. Shoot something like that through a choked shotgun and you really risk a burst barrel

[rickyp]

another point any time you change something in the shot shell recipe you can change the pressure. if you add a lot of weight you will increase pressure

[coyotejoe]

I have tried the split shot idea and it does work, sort-of. The pellets won't spread out in a ring shaped pattern, the air resistance of the string pulls all pellets together so that they strike in a tight cluster, may as well shoot a slug. Lots of guys shooting cylinder bore muzzleloaders have tried to make paper shot cups to improve the pattern and those often become a slug as well.  I've also tried the reverse, buckshot squeezed flat in a vise and loaded in a stack in the shell to increase the spread and that also works, maybe too well. It would be deadly at ten yards but at 20 yards they spread so much they may not hit the target at all. Sort of like the fabled "stack of dimes" load but with lead dimes. I've gotten fairly good accuracy with a single lead ball loaded inside a plastic shotcup, I used a .575" ball in a twenty gauge and a .650" ball in a twelve, about as accurate as a typical slug load from a smoothbore but offering no real advantage over a factory slug load. Ballistic Products offers a variety of odd-ball shotshell loads, well worth checking out their website just for a laugh. It can be fun to experiment with such loads with black powder but with the unpredictable smokeless stuff there is good reason why all reloading manuals caution to use this data exactly as shown and I'd never recommend adding anything to a factory loaded shotshell.