Home Forums Birds & Dogs Shotguns Attn .410 Shooters; What is your FAVORITE, EFFECTIVE load?

Doing a little improptu "poll" .....

What is your favorite shotshell load [brand name, shot size and shell length] in the .410 shell?

What is your average effective range with your favorite load?

I'm trying to determine which "all-around .410 load" is the best for most hunting situations - to decide what to store with a truck/survival gun.

So far I'm thinking 7 1/2's of some kind, for most applications.

Thank you!

Back when all we had were paper shells and no shot cups, I killed all sorts of stuff with 3 inch Remington, 7 1/2's. That would be Valley Quail, dove, rabbits, squirrels, and even a Bandtail Pigeon.
With today's much improved ammo, I'd try a few brands of 7 1/2's and see which patterened the best. Make no mistake, different brands will pattern differently. E

I totally agree. And I remember when first learning to shoot a shotgun, a .410 M370. My pops used to buy 'paper' Super-X shells too.

Thanks Eremicus.

Other respondants?

Hopefully you're out there and want to share your successes with the .410.

I mostly use my 410 for keeping my shooting skills up , and handload for the most part, but ZI have shot some ruffed grouse with it using Winchester factory skeet AA's and also some 3"#6's.
couldn't tell the difference, all, the birds died!
I shot the 3" ammo on the skeet range as well, same thing.
I tend to like more pellets as opposed to bigger pellets though, so usually shoot 9's at ruffies....
Cat

#6s->#9s

But I ususally put my Model 42 up and grab my 28ga O/U.

Now you're talking!

I currently have 3 .410s: a Win 37 bought new in 1951, a Savage 219 .22 Hornet with a spare .410 barrel I bought new from Numrich's in the early 1980s, and a Savage M24 combo .410/.22WRM with a 1x Weaver scope.

I use 2 1/2" 4s or 5s for cottontails; it only takes one or two pellets to kill them and the big pellets are easier to find and remove (your dentist is the only one who likes it when you bite down on a pellet; lead is only "relatively soft"....). Good for tree squirrels, too.

For quail I use factory 3" 7 1/2s and then reload the hulls with copper-plated 7s (I have a stash, but am running out....). The copper-plated 7s have similar ballistics to a lead 7 1/2, but hold up in the full choke better ('cause they're harder) and give a slightly better pattern. I killed a few ruffed grouse with that load when I lived in upstate NY.

For "things that go bump in the night" I load a 2 1/2" Winchester with 3 000 buckshot. Only had to kill one rabid (or at least sick) coon with that, but it worked fine. My M24 groups the buckshot in about a 4" group at 25 yards, with an occasional flier (full choke barrel).

My Savage M24 .410 barrel shoots .410 slugs very well at up to 40 yards. I can always shoot a 3-shot 3" group with the American Foster-style slugs at that range, and the slugs only hit about 3" lower than the .22WRM in the other barrel, so I can use a 6 o'clock hold. Haven't figured out what to do with the slugs yet, but they are fairly powerful--about like a .45 Colt revolver. With the scope, I think you could kill a deer in a pinch, in the woods. Illegal most places, but beats starving IMO....

I sure as heck wouldn't starve for some bureaocratic weenie, either! And thanks for a great post. Too bad 1/2 and odd sizes of shot aren't more available than they are.

Ballistic Products BTW, carries copper and nickle-plated shot (even #7's, #3's, #5 1/2's, etc.) as well as Hevi-Shot.

Stubbleduck, thanks for the heads-up on Ballistic Products; I need to refill my #7 supply. Fortunately a .410 shell doesn't use much (unfortunately, I don't get to go quail hunting as much in CA as I'd like--old age and fire danger closures seem to limit me to about two trips a season....but finding cottontails is easy in Southern CA; you just have to get to 'em before it gets hot).

I usually stick with Super X or Remington 3" 6s and keep shots to 30 yards or so. One pellet is all you usually need. I think #7s would be an excellent choice for a 410.

I use 3" fedral #6. Great on skunks and coons around my 5 acre mini farm. KDJ

I have used the Rem. 3" either No.6 or 7.5 shot for most of my life. Have used it very effictively on rabbitts, squirrels, doves , quail, grouse, pheasants most everyhting I hunt small game wise. Along with an assortment of critters that needed killing while i was just wandering around out in the wild. Rattle snakes mostly, after we moved out west . As a kid back in the 60 and 70's I watched my dad kill all maner of game with the Stevens 410/22 I now carry. I know he took 2 mallards and one very unlucky canada goose with the 6's one fall morning in probably 1971. Today I would go along with most others and say the 410 is not really big enough for a lot of what Dad( and I )used it for back then but no one ever told us it wouldn't work , and we ate lots dinners that the little gun provided for us !

My interest in the .410 is for the roll of camp gun, truck gun, survival gun (mated with other ammo and possibly another cartridge - .45C, the Casull or even the .460S&W).

My first shotgun was a Winchester M370 singleshot in .410 my dad brought me from a '68 Wespac. It was a great gun for teaching the most basic wingshooting fundimentals, but was a real handicap as a game getter (beyond close bunnies or ground squirrels). I'd start a youngster with a 20 gauge single shot, or perhaps a pumpgun limited to ONE ROUND!

For me the .410 is a handloading program. I'm primarily a target shooter but the .410 is suprising at a distance. A remington STS hull, Federal sc410 wad, 12.7 grains of Lil' Gun and a Win 209 primer clocks at 1240 from a 25" barrel and will put 117 out of 175 pellets in an 8-1/2 X 11 sheet of legal paper at 32 yards. That my friends will kill a turkey or a goose shot in the head...and is deadly on pats and rabbits. My experience is the 3" shells don't pattern this good with the long shot column and usually are at a lesser velocity and that equals less energy. Amend this to add that is a 1/2 oz load of hard 7-1/2 shot in the handload.

Scott

Agree with SSB that the best patterns are with handloads. .410s can be picky about what they eat. And if you are going to stretch their ability with longish range wingshooting, you need the maximum performance your gun can give. For furry small game potting, the factory stuff does fine.

Lil' Gun RULES when it comes to the 410!
I love it, it meters well, and hits hard.
Factory 3" stuff is not as accurate (pattern wise) in my FAIR Jubilee as my handloaded 2 1/2's are.
13 grains of Lil'Gun and a Ballistics products MG410in a AA hull does it for me.
Cat

Thanks fellas.

So 2 1/2 inch .410's rule!!?? I can accept that.

Plus I hear nothing but 'positives' about Lil'Gun regardless of what its used in.

Couple further questions;

Would a 2 3/4inch .410 with 5/8ounce of small shot be more of a good thing? (or past the law of diminishing marginal returns handloading those punie shotshells?)

Are any of you using multiple chokes in your .410's? Or fixed chokes?

What size of choke do you like to use?

Thanks!

I've owned several 410s and always shot 7 1/2 3"......a fun gun!

When I reloaded for them I loaded 3/4 Oz of 7 1/2 but try as I may, it never killed pheasants like my 28 Ga with the same 3/4 Oz 7 1/2......and I really don't know why!

Stubble, what you get into with loading more than 9/16 oz or so in a 2-1/2" is excess pressure. I have loaded 2-1/2" all the way to a fat 3/4 oz by using Ballistic Products brush wads and cutting then in half....just leaving a shot cup and no petals and using a mec single stage to hand seat it and by the time you get it up to 1100 fps or so...the hull destroys itself from pressure. It sure slays clay birds on a trap field tho...lol
As far as my .410's go I have both fixed and iterchangable chokes. I have a browning 525 Sporting 4 barrel set, A Remington 1100 sporting .410 with the briley system from the factory and several fixed chike guns. With the Browning or the Rem I have no problem breaking clays to 45 yrds with the Light Mod tubes. You have to Remember that those pellets have all the energy of a 12 ga....just don't overaim it and shoot it. I've sent as many as 15,000 rounds downrange in a year. Its my favorite shotgun round by far.

Scott