Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Deer with shotgun and buckshot

Growing in Alabama in the 1960s and 1970s(mainly started hunting in the 70s) we used to dog deer and shoot them with shotguns. I don’t remember a bunch of wounded deer and even used to hunt them out of tree stands with shotguns. We killed a lot of them with shotguns and like most I migrated to handguns and rifles later. I find myself hunting a lot of thick areas on Alabama and think I will carry a shotgun up in my tree stands again after many years hiatus from a scattergun. I will limit my shots to fifty yards or so as that is all the thick areas will allow anyway. Anybody busting deer with buckshot?

Not lately.
Last one was with a $50.00 pawn shop
single and a 50 cent 00 shell

So what did yall use in Bama as far as
barrel length, choke, shells, etc.?
Always interested even if I'll never use
the same methods, etc.
No dogs allowed here for a good while,
although I'm sure there are those that
never stopped

Back in the day it was mainly modified choke with magnum 00 buck with 12 pellets. The status gun was a browning auto 5 which my older brother had. I made do with an old Remington model 11. Most used was a Remington 1100. Toward the end of the dog era, I finally could afford a browning auto five .

I spent a lot of time in VA when I was active duty USN. A large part of that state is shotgun or muzzleloader. Killed a pile of deer with a 12 ga using both buckshot and slugs. Hit them right and they go down in a pile.

None with buckshot.

Only 1 with a 2 3/4" slug....1974 at "Hogeye" Ar. near Devil's Den State Park. It's a real place in a beeautiful area.
He left a short blood trail that Stevie Wonder could follow. They work.

For ?whatever? reason I've been a "Rifle Nut" as a cousin called me 'back in the 70s'.

Jerry

https://apexmunition.com/apex-products/predator-deer-tss/

This stuff is outstanding. Pricey, but the question is “ would you pay $10 for that deer?”

Have shot a trainload with buck shot in years past... Had some guns that liked 00, some liked 000 and some that shot #1 great. Every shotgun is different and will throw different brands of buckshot and different manufacturers differently.

Full choke A5's tended to shoot #1'a and #4's pretty well... as a general rule, the bigger the pellet, the less constriction needed... experiment...

I have a Kicks Choke in a SBE1 that will kill a deer all day at 70 yards with copper plated Winchester 3" 00... but I went thru a lot of loads to find that combo. The 2 3/4" shells patterned almost as well...

I grew up in Upstate NY and we used slugs and shotguns all my youth in the Southern Tier of NY.
When I was stationed in Delaware a saw a deer shot with Buckshot for the first time in my life - pretty impressive

I grew up using a shotgun and buckshot and killed probably my first 10-15 deer with it. My first was a doe with #3 buck 20 ga. After that, they all fell to 12 ga 2 3/4 00 buck out of my dad’s 1100 modified choke. It didn’t hold 3”. Don’t remember patterns.

Just a few days ago, my son shot a doe with his rifle and made a bad shot. The next morning while looking for it I jumped it out of a thicket and shot it with buckshot. It was with 3” 00 buckshot out of my 870 with modified choke.

Killed my first deer with a Remington 1100 and 00 Buck. I have seen deer tuck their heads and cut flips from buckshot. It can be very effective. However I purchased my first rifle and it’s been many years since I have used a shotgun on deer.
GreggH

I also grew up in AL using buckshot on dog drives, a few years earlier than you, dogdoc. In the early 60s I heard of only two times rifles were used on deer. Buckshot is deadly on deer....as long as you know your, and your shotgun's, limitations. So many times, the hunters just opened up on the deer when they saw them, not being aware of the range, resulting in wounded deer difficult or impossible to find. I had that happen to me a couple of times resulting in a personal distance limitation of 25 or so yards. I know buckshot would kill at longer ranges, but it never fails at that range unless you don't aim properly. As stated in an earlier post, careful experimentation with barrels and types of buckshot can significantly increase the effective distance of buckshot. However, it is not precise like a single, aimed shot from an accurate rifle.

It all became a moot issue for me because I fell in love with rifles and went totally away from shotgun hunting. The handful of times I've been forced to use buckshot since the mid 60s have been during walk drives with friends who dictated it's use. My buckshot is now reserved for use in repelling boarders if the groids ever come after me or my family.

One of the last deer I killed with buckshot was a large doe that stopped about 10 yards from me facing directly toward me. When I pulled the trigger, she was driven completely back into the ground. I joked to my buddies that she probably had dirt packed in her rear end from it hitting the ground so hard. Yep, at close range, a load of buckshot produces startling results....

Always preferred #4 buck

#1 Buck is a gem.

Thanks for posting that
My grandpa used an old 16 gauge sweet 16 if I'm
thinking right. I was too young and stupid to ask
the proper questions before they all passed away.
I don't remember him ever having any kind of rifle
to hunt with. Just the scratched up auto and a
410 single and a browning 25 in the pocket.
By the time I started deer hunting, the deer were
starting to come back, and a 8-10 inch 6 point
was a whopper

Running dogs was the norm for most of my early days of deer hunting and shotguns with buckshot were standard. Deer were relatively scarce, someone would ride around before the hunt began looking for a track to let the dogs out on. God help you if you shot a doe. I still love to hear the hounds hot on one's trail, but unfortunately running dogs has become a circus of guys constantly riding around in their trucks talking on their CBs. For that reason, I quit the club I was in years ago. Deer are far more abundant now, but in some of the big tracts of timber company land running dogs is still a good way to hunt due to the size of the blocks and the dense undergrowth. What with the large blocks of clearcut and young growth pine, rifles are used way more than shotguns these days.

I have killed a couple with buckshot. I have also shot a couple with buckshot I couldn't find that dripped blood. I would use a pump, lever or semiauto rifle instead of buck personally. If I was hunting driven deer in thick stuff up close.
Pattern your gun before hunting with buck. I did and never used it again. My Browning Auto5 at 30 yards had a pattern with the shots clustered together and a hole in the middle that could miss the vitals. I had an Ithaca Mag10 that through a beautiful tight pattern evenly distributed. But the gun was too heavy and long for deer dogging. My brother killed a few with it.

I used to hunt a couple spots in VA that we’re shotgun with buckshot only. I used 3” Federal 00 in a semiauto Mossberg 930.

For the hunter who practices with their weapon, has patterned the shot snd can place it where they dim, buckshot will definitely kill deer.

I’ve seen bad outcomes with hunters who did none of the aforementioned, and in these instances buckshot can definitely would deer.

As soon as I moved and started hunting in rifle zones, I sold the 22 gauge and leftover buckshot. I’ve since [bleep] running deer, snd IMHO a fast handling AR-15 in 6.5 Grendel or 6.8 SPC with a red dot or LPVO with illuminated reticle are superior to buckshot for shooting running deer inside of 50 yards.

Back in the 70s and 70s on dog drives all the
Deer were usually hauling ass hence the shotgun. Of course there was no grading of the bucks back then. On doe days it was a massacre. I am going to rig up a sling for my auto 5 and hunt some out of a tree stand in some thick lease land for have. I really think in these areas a shotgun may be best. I am talking Alabama thick . Real hard to walk through in my places but big bucks feel safe moving through it. You western hunters probably don’t have to deal with this kind of f thick too often. 50 yards max and often deer right under the stand

As a kid I grew up in a shotgun only county. There was a long season and no bag limit on does. My brother and I had the same shotguns that we used for pheasant hunting to deer hunt with.

And we shot the heck out of 'em with single '0, double '00, number #1; whatever we had, and then we shot some more.

50 yards would've been a long shot, most all were shot between 10-20 yards. Buckshot can be very effective and sporty, especially with a couple teenagers and no bag limit.