A 25 Round Shotgun Practice Routine

If you go shopping for shotgun ammunition at your local gun shop, you will soon figure out that most shotgun ammunition comes in 25 round boxes unless it is buckshot or slugs. With that in mind, I came up with a standard 25 round practice session that I can use for the shotgun to help …

Trouble in Paradise: Issues with Federal’s 8 Pellet Flite Control (LE13300)

For a while now the go to recommendation for defensive buckshot has been some form of Federal's 00 Flite Control loads. The king of the hill being the low recoil 8 pellet version (LE13300). It was pretty easy. Need your gun to shoot consistent, tighter patterns out to 25 or 30 yards? Just use 8 …

A Basic Pattern Target

I pattern a lot of buckshot loads. One of the problems with patterning is that it consumes a lot of targets. Being able to compare one load to the next also means always having the same type of target on hand. Or at least a target with the same size scoring area as the other …

Does Bass Pro Have a Winner: Herter’s 8 Pellet Low Recoil Buckshot

This isn’t the first Herter’s load I have tested. Having a Bass Pro local makes it pretty easy to keep up with their offerings. Herter’s, if you are not familiar is a house brand for Cabelas and Bass Pro. My understanding is that it has been around for a while, but not always manufactured by …

The Shotgun Side Saddle

What side saddle to use for this gun, or that gun, is a question I see often, and get asked personally on a fairly regular basis. there are a lot of options out there, which I guess is why people ask. I have found one option to be universal, effective, and budget friendly, the Vang …

The Shotgun Speed Drill

There are not many shotgun specific drills out there beyond the really basic stuff. It is even harder to find “standards” type drills, or test, that have some sort of pass/fail metric. This one sort of gets us there. I think as more people shoot it, I will eventually assign time brackets for specific skill …

The Shotgun DOPE Card

Most people familiar with precision rifle shooting will also be familiar with what a DOPE card or book is. DOPE is actually an acronym, but I shoot shotguns, so don’t ask me. It is essentially a “how my gun shot before” card. That info then serves as a clue for what the precision shooter can …

Why a tight buckshot pattern?

This is a repost from my other blog, Priority Performance Shooting. It was originally published in January of 2018. Buckshot comes in a lot of different flavors. There are the generics that are basically a stack of lead balls in a plastic shotshell. There are loads that utilize special features like hardened pellets or buffer …

Fiocchi 00 Defense Review and Pattern Test

August 2020, this Fiocchi 00 Defense load was all over the place. I guess someone found a huge stack of it in a warehouse somewhere because just about every online ammunition retailer had it in stock for a 2-3 week stretch. You can still find it now, but not quite as prevalent. The way ammunition …

Not all Shotshells are Created Equal

This is a repost from December 2017 on my other blog. I am slowly migrating all my shotgun content here. Lately I have been doing a bit of shotgun work. The shotgun, much like the revolver for me, has a certain appeal to it that simply cannot be explained. I just like shotguns, and there …