Originally Posted by Lee24
Push on your own abdomin just below the sternum, to see how soft it is.

While we are on the subject of birdshot, let me dispell a few more erroneous speculations I saw in this thread.

1. #2 shot is bird shot. It is for geese and turkey.
My 32-inch SxS, tuned for #2 lead shot, would fold up a duck at 70 yards. That is why guides and market hunters used such guns, to kill geese and ducks cleanly and kill cripples wounded by their clients.

2. A full choked shotgun, firing #6 shot at a 3/4 inch plywood board at 20 feet, will blow a 2-inch diameter hole through the plywood, where about 85% of the shot hits. The other 40 pellets or so will be scattered in about an 8 inch circle around this hole.


Exactly lee, that "soft spot" is usually defined as the margin of your intercostal arch and that is below you xyphoid process, inches below your heart. Penetration with anything there has the ability to seriously screw up your diaphram, abdominal aorta, pancreas, left lobe of the liver or even possibly a spleen depending on the angle, but your not going to get to your heart going that route without going from below and with that I will now say your medical school is a fraud also considering any of the above information is junior college anatomy stuff.

Regarding birdshot I aleady said it could cover all the way up to 0 or 00buck since a few have used it for geese. Since we were talking about .357 snake shot it is usually using #7 1/2 or even #6 in some homemade stuff it seemed appropriate to base the discussion on that. I also already said I have no doubt #2 or a BB load would easily fold a dog and would be a great choice. Also I have no doubts about your example regarding the choked shotgun, but I fail to see any connection between a rifled barrel throwing a 1/4oz of shot and a fully choked shotgun which I agree would be devasting anytime a shot charge is even remotely intact when it hits the target.

Hunt hard, kill clean, waste nothing and offer no apologies.

"In rifle work, group size is of some interest...but it is well to remember that a rifleman does not shoot groups, he shoots shots." Jeff Cooper