I once did the shortened .308 brass trick to make .45ACP shotshells, back in the late 80's. Heavy roll crimped with an RCBS crimping die, thin card over-shot wad, #9 shot as I recall. I used thin cork head gasket material to cut over powder wads. The first couple I applied some clear nail polish to seal the works, the last few I skipped that and it didn't seem to matter. I didn't load them hot enough to cycle my 1911 Colt- should work ok in a revolver though.
The thing with shooting shot out of a rifled barrel is patterns will truly suck. One way to mitigate that to a degree is to go with as heavy a shot charge as possible, and drive it as slow as possible and still get sufficient penetration to kill a snake (and it doesn't take much).
I have lived most of my adult life in copperhead infested areas. (I got struck twice, and luckily had boots on both times that deflected the bites. One of my dogs wasn't so lucky.) I took to carrying either a .22 or .32 revolver and dispatched more of them than I can remember, with "ball" ammo. More often than not it meant multiple shots to hit the wriggling bast*rds, but I always triumphed. I hate those C*cksuckers.
If you want a double handful of #9 shot, Scot, I'll send you some. I'm not shooting much skeet these days and can let some go!
Last edited by gnoahhh; 08/24/15.
