Lethal Loads & Laser Cartridges

While I own a varmint rifle or two, I won’t take a calling stand without a shotgun at hand. The shotgun is a caller’s tool—ideal for coyote, fox and bobcat in brushy and broken country where those varmints can make startling, rabbit-like appearances at ranges under 50 yards. The shotgun is also ideal for moving varmints often screened by brush—brush that will easily deflect or destroy thin-jacketed varmint bullets zipping along at 3,200 fps plus. Having said that, I also will have a Remington 660 in .243 Win alongside my leg just in case the varmint hangs up out there beyond 40 or 50 yards.

Kings of the varmint shotgun world are the 3″ and 3-1/2″, 12-gauge magnums and the 3-1/2″, 10-guage magnum, shooting large doses of B-, BB- or T-size shot at 1,300 to 1,350 fps. What converts an upland or waterfowling scattergun into a varminter is the load.

Winchester’s Hex Shot Patterns

A box of Winchester’s new “Hex Steel Shot” finally arrived, giving me the opportunity to shoot a few patterns. What I received was a 12-gauge, 3″ loading of 1-3/8 ounces of No. 2 shot at 1,400 fps.

Announced earlier this year, Winchester is calling its new cubical-shaped shot, a hexahedron—“Hex” for short. The new waterfowl approved Hex Shot features rounded edges and corners. According to Winchester, because of its shape, it can be more easily stacked inside a shot cup, providing up to 15 percent more non-toxic shot in each shell. The shot cup itself is new, and its “diamond cut” petals act as tiny air brakes to gently separate the wad from the shot.

The secondary benefit claimed for Hex Shot is its capacity due to its shape to create greater wound channels in tissue. With a bit of advertising hyperbole, Winchester’s ad copy reads, “Hex Shot is designed to hit waterfowl like high-velocity, tumbling bricks—creating massive wound channels, preventing over penetration and maximizing energy deposit and knock-down shock within the bird.”

The waterfowl-patterning target I favor is HunterJohn’s. It features the profile of a flying duck, an outline of the ideal impact area in a duck’s anatomy for clean kills and five, offset 30″ circles allowing you to select the one that best contains the shot pattern.

I shot three patterns at 40 yards with a modified choke in my Winchester Super X2. The target illustrated depicts dead ducks, with a little bit of patchiness but a pretty good distribution of shot within the 30″ circle selected. Frankly, I was surprised how well the non-spherical shot held a pattern at 40 yards.

The waterfowl season is just around the corner, and I’m anxious to see what Hex Shot will do in the blind.

The 12-Gauge Laser Cartridge

This is one of the greatest home training aids I’ve ever come across. It is a 12-gauge cartridge containing a red laser activated by the firing pin of a shotgun. It’s really a spin-off of a whole family of small arms laser-training aids manufactured by Laser Ammo, Ltd. of Israel.
The 12-gauge aluminum shell unscrews so you can insert a firing-pin-activated laser pointer unit inside. The base of the shell sports four scalloped cutouts. As you insert the cartridge into the chamber of a pump or semi-auto, you align the extractor with one of the cutouts so the shell is not extracted when you cycle and recock the gun. The ejectors on double guns are normally wider than the cutouts and probably will not work with the current model. I’m going to suggest to the manufacturer a further modification of the unit so it will function with double gun ejectors.

The unit is a perfect complement to Gil Ash’s “flashlight drill,” developed at the OSP Shooting School, with the exception you can’t mount a flashlight on a single-barrel gun and have the laser cartridge work. So here are a couple of the modified drill ideas.

Standing in the center of a moderate-sized room, notice the seams formed at the juncture of the walls and ceiling and how those seams connect the four corners. The seams will represent the flight paths of your birds and the corners, the shot points. Starting at alternate corners will give you a left-to-right and a right-to-left crossing shot.

With the gun in the ready position and starting at one corner, begin tracking the seam with your gun, mount the gun, take the shot at the next corner and follow through. Another drill would be to look at a corner (straightaway bird), mount the gun and take the shot. The idea is to develop a consistent and smooth mount and let-off and see where that instant red dot impacts.

With a Mini Maglite in one barrel of a double, and the laser cartridge in the other, these drills would really be meaningful. We’ll get that Laser Ammo cartridge adapted to doubles yet.

Federal Premium Ammunition
900 Ehlen Dr.
Anoka, MN 55303
(800) 322-2342
https://www.federalpremium.com

HunterJohn
P.O. Box 477, St. Louis, MO 63166
(314) 531-7250
http://hunterjohn.com

Laser Ammo USA
P.O. Box 222017
Great Neck, NY 11022
(516) 858-1262
https://www.laser-ammo.com

MidwayUSA
5875 W. Van Horn Tavern Rd.
Columbia, MO 65203
(573) 445-6363
https://www.midwayusa.com

Winchester Ammunition
600 Powder Mill Rd.
East Alton, IL 62024
(618) 258-2000
https://winchester.com

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