Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns snake shot loads

I have used .44 snake shot for years and have never had any problems until the other day when I was shooting at a coyote with my 329. I generally carry 2 snake loads followed by 4 solids when I am on a tractor in the summer. I saw a coyote about 50 yards away standing in the edge of the woods. I stopped the tractor, drew my revolver, cycled it twice to get a solid ready to shoot, and shot at the coyote three times. I missed this time. I then noticed that the revolver would not cock because the capsules that hold the shot had worked forward from the recoil and were sticking out the front of the cylinder.

This has made me rethink how I use the shot cartridges.

Well.....

alrighty then.

Are you a hand-loader?

I do hand load, but these shot cartridges were factory loads.

The thing I learned that I wish I had known earlier is that recoil from a full power load can pull out the shot capsules to the extent that the revolver is rendered useless until the cylinder is opened and the shot cartridges removed. Perhaps this experience can be useful to someone else who might want to use these shot cartridges.

Factory shotshells for revolvers suck in more ways than I can enumerate here.

Here's a link to show you how to make your own shotshells. You can modify the method for your .44 by using Krag cases, or 303 Brit cases. The nice thing about these shotshells is that they will NOT come apart in your gun under recoil.

http://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/6574835/1

250K bullets kill the schit out of snakes.


Travis

Speaking of shot loads, I tested some CCI shot loads in my new SIG 220, .45 ACP.
Fired one HP load and fired the next two shot loads which cycled through the action normally. Heck, you'd be surprised how well they patterned at 15 yds. Any quail standing there would be very dead. E

I wouldn't expect shot capsules to stay put during the recoil of a light .44 Magnum. The plastic capsule doesn't have a cannelure and even if it did, the lubricity of the plastic would let the capsule slide forward during recoil.

The capsules will withstand light recoil forces but the .44 M329 is a different breed of cat.

Since snakes are usually courteous enough to hang around so you can shoot them, you might want to carry the snake loads in your pocket and swap loads before approaching the snake.

And, as Travis said, .44 slugs do kill snakes just fine.

Maybe so, but since my intrinsic tremor gets a LOT worse in proximity to things with venom and fangs, shotshell loads provide a certain amount of "wiggle-room" in the marksmanship department...

Drink more. Will calm your nerves.


Travis

Demerol would be a nice option.

I have made shotshells for .44 as well as other calibers. Venturino had a really good article a few years ago in handloader on how to do it. I ordered off the net a bag of no 12 shot, cause i wanted a thicker pattern.
You can use a variety of things for wads between the powder/shot such as cutting out circles from a steyrafoam cup. Use another circle for the case mouth. I held them in position, the cover on the case mouth with a little electric glue gun. They work better in my opinion that the cci blue cup loads. For my .45colt shotshells i use a .410 shotcup cutting down the wings and a gas check inverted for the .44mag. to hold the shot in place. In venturino's article, he showed a big idaho potato, that he turned into mashed potatoes. I tested mine and it did the same thing.
I went back and looked at doc rocket's article and did pretty much the same thing. Difference was i didn't use another caliber's brass, i used .44special brass when making the shotshell as an example. Got the shot same place he did, and made the powder/shot barrier as he did out of a .410shotcup for the .45colt, or you just sharpen the mouth of a .44special casing to cut little round steyrafoam circles out of a cup. And instead of using the calking for the front, i used a foam circle held in place using an electric glue gun.

Demerol makes me puke. Handgun shotshells don't.

The extra recoil of the solid loads pushed to shot cups forward, the softer recoiling SS loads will not do that to each other.

I use a 12 GA, boot heel, and a shovel for snakes.


Gunner

i ain't gonna get close enought to a snake to use a boot heel until you can't really tell it's a snake anymore.
I still have about 80 or so snakes to go to make up in body weight for one of them killing one of my goldies a few years ago.

If I end up close enough to use a boot heel, the serpent will likely die of being covered in SHYTE splatter moreso than a boot heel.

a number of years ago, my then son in law, recently moved here from california, and I were out quail hunting. He was on top of a ridge, i on the bottom, when he spotted a really big buzztail moving down the hill. I said shoot it, he kept hesitating, following it down the hill. I guess in calif. they don't approve of doing snakes. This sucker was over four feet long. I finally told him to get out of the way, and let go with all three rounds out of a remington 1100, point blank range, reloaded, and did another three. I was pretty proud of myself starting at the head and working back. My comment to the youngster was we were going to hunt that area again, and i didn't need to come back next year and half to deal with it again. The only good viper is a dead viper.

one of the reasons for making my own shotshells is tied to those buzztails. A certain water tank i have hunted since the 50's on the desert, on a ranch i frequent, always has them around the tank. More than once i have started to bend down to pick up a dead dove, or wounded one, and found a buzztail sitting there looking at me.
if i could use a 105mm howitzer with flechettes, i would

did i mention i HATE snakes?

I've only had two occasions to shoot a snake in perhaps 40 years - but I do keep one round of shot up first in my 44 Bulldog when hiking.

I craft my own using Speer capsules (and find no drawbacks to them whatsoever, btw) using #9 shot. The best and simplest way to prevent the capsule from cracking or moving forward under recoil is to run one drop of superglue around the case mouth as the final step in loading. I don't crimp these and have never had one creep at all even after four regular shots from the VERY lightweight Bulldog.

That would work just as well with CCI factory shotshells. Try it.

I will have to try the superglue.