Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Buckshot for home defense

I have lived on the border for the last 12 years in an old ranch house that is anything but a fortress. I keep an 18 1/2 inch Ithaca 37 12 ga. with No. 4 buck at the head of the bed and a Winchester 1300 12 ga. with a 20 inch barrel, 3-inch 00 buck and the full choke choke tube for ventures outside the house. Since the house is an old gypsum block house with 10-12 inch walls plastered to look like adobe, I don't worry too much about "overpenetration". In either case, I also have a .45 auto stuck in my waistband or in a paddle holster. I have shot both of the shotguns at paper, feral hogs, deer and antelope crippled by cars, skunks, coyotes and feral dogs.

I have never had to use either in the defense of life or property but have absolute faith in all to do the job if it becomes necessary. I adopted the No. 4 buck for inside the house years ago, based on advice from a number of friends in the Border Patrol (old guys who predate the current inflated force) and Massad Ayoob.

As you said, you pays your money and takes your choices (or chances)!

Col. Coopers ' Principles of self defense' dicusses in depth home defense strategies, and tactics.........up to and including architecture, and old principles of denying an agressor " cover, under your walls"....
Good read, every now and than, ...........blow the dust off your mindset /attitude.....train hard ,fight easy sorta thing.

GTC

00=good stuff in 12ga for deer in brush...would not want to be anywhere near the house with my new gold sending out swarms of hornets at intruders...nor would I want to be the sheetrocker patching up that type of handy work.

If I remember 00 buck was suggested by Gun Test magazine when they tested home defense shot gun ammo. I will have to look for the issue again.

Its been a long while since I have done it so I patterned the 20" open choke 20 gauge barrel of my Savage Mod 24 .22/20 gauge with 2 3/4" shells of no 3 buck today, one round each on a standard combat sihouette target, twenty pellets per shell.

Seven yards: five inch spread.
Fifteen yards: fourteen inch spread.
Twenty five yards: twenty-four inch spread.

Birdwatcher

Seven yards is a big room.....at least in my house it is.

We did too in the Marines, esp. around ammo.

Kentucky State Troopers load four rounds of Federal Tactical 00 buck in the tubes of their 870's. I spent an evening on the shotgun range with the current cadet class and noticed that at 7 yards (21 feet) our load is a dandy turkey load. It was the exception raher than the norm to see individual pellet holes in the silhouette targets. Generally, the holes looked as if the entire shot column had passed through the same hole. I don't particularly care for it. I understand why some would want their load to perform like that, but as for me, I want my shotgun to throw a pattern. I have a couple rifles in the car to make the precision shots with. I wouldn't use that load in my house anyway. I keep an AR carbine by my headboard. If we still had the old 0 buck that the agency used to issue, I wouldn't mind that at all.

crossfireoops,
have you ever tried 3/8ths dowel pins?
I used to work with a guy who got into it with his wives
father who knocked her off her barstool in an argument of some kind. The "argument" changed locations to her fathers trailer house and the husband was outside and I suppose wanting inside. The father in law stuck a 410 out the window and shot him in the face blinding him (not killing). He came to work with a seeing eye dog.
So it is possible to get shot in the head and not get killed.
From the concealed carry training I took I learned that if you have reason to pull a gun you had better have justification for killing them. I wouldn't worry about wounding them or getting sued. I would just do whatever I needed to do to protect myself. My life is worth more than some dirtbags. (jmho)
GWN