Coyote shotgun handloads

[jds holler]

When calling with both rifle and shotgun, I sit with my shotgun ready, and rifle laying close on right side. If something comes bouncing all the way in, they get blasted with the scattergun. If they show up at a distance and are too slow or wary, there's never been a problem putting the shotgun down and picking up the rifle. There has been times when I switched guns a couple of times on the same stand.

I don't go with flinging a "hail Marry" shotgun shot at a fleeing coyote. If they are 40+ yards out with their ass toward you, NO shotgun shell will be reliable. I'd rather switch to the rifle and hope for a clear shot before they disappear. jd

 

[Rock Knocker]

That sounds like a good plan. Ive had a few stupid misses on close coyotes that would have been a give-me with a shotgun. I hunt in winter though, with lots of snow and im always sitting down and fumbling with handcalls and remotes in the dark. Im always worried about getting the muzzle full of snow, everything gets full of snow. I tape my A2 birdcage but theres always times where i was just target shooting and it wasnt taped, excuses.... etc. I should get some of the latex finger things to use on both guns.

 

[Rock Knocker]

Im working on recreating the Federal Flight Control wad. So far I have cut the bottom of two CTPS wads flat and cut one of them very short. I cut the head and crimp off a spent 12ga hull and I stuck the two wads bottom to bottom and from the bottom short cup side I used a small soldering iron to melt the two wads together. This plastic welds well and theyre stuck, a double cup wad, shotcup and rearward facing short powder cup.

I need to work on cuts but that shouldnt be hard, Ive seen other recreate the cuts of a flight control wad but never add a rearward cup for the petcock effect of the Federal wad.

Proof of concept, I just started melting, the plastic hull is not good alignment at all of the two wads before welding. I need a pipe or even cut off stub of 12ga barrel to hold the wads perfectly together straight for welding.

My Fiocchi 3" hulls dont have a deep powder recess like my Federals, that allows me to get the wad down into the hull with a more "full encapsulation" of the powder in the powder side of the wad. I need to mess with measurement of the wad cuts but I think I will benefit if I add 1/8" cork wad and a nitro card ontop of the powder in the powder cup, then I can have a larger "powder cup" for larger pedals to open from the rear.

A little dicey, I know, Ive got a guy who has a broken old Stevens or Savage pump thats single feed now, Im going to buy that for testing, I plan on straping it to a stump and pulling with a string....

The powder being inside the cup may have a dramatic effect but ive got Lil'Gun powder thats slow powder and I can start with light loads.

The couple I melted together need better alignment but they look identical to the flight control wad, I just have to hope and figure out how to get all the pedals to deploy correctly and I dont see how they wont work.

 

[Rock Knocker]

A couple shotgun reloading youtubers may have just derailed my flight control wad plans.

They made a video yesterday recreating the Winchester LongBeard XR shell, I have LongBeard shells here, I never knew but I guess Winchester uses a special buffer in that shell, its a very thin epoxy that hardens into shatter glass. The two part plastic is called SMASH Plastic, it makes the fake glass that breaks easy. They have done this with a simple sugar glass recipe; water, sugar, corn syrup cooked to 300F.

Im going to try this, i never heard of the liquid hardening shatter buffers before.

 

[RegionRat]

A couple shotgun reloading youtubers may have just derailed my flight control wad plans.

They made a video yesterday recreating the Winchester LongBeard XR shell, I have LongBeard shells here, I never knew but I guess Winchester uses a special buffer in that shell, its a very thin epoxy that hardens into shatter glass. The two part plastic is called SMASH Plastic, it makes the fake glass that breaks easy. They have done this with a simple sugar glass recipe; water, sugar, corn syrup cooked to 300F.

Im going to try this, i never heard of the liquid hardening shatter buffers before.

Link to those YT videos?

 

[Rock Knocker]

They dont show much here, Ive heard them talk about the SMASH Plastic in other videos vaguely but i didnt know what it was, I think they will come out with another video with better sugar shells. Sounds like they poured the melted sugar and hot shot into an uncut wad and then cut the wad with a razor after it was hard. Ive just gotten back from the store with a cheap tiny sauce pan for my new lead candy.

Purchase SMASH! Plastic

Optically clear and UV resistant breakaway casting resin

www.reynoldsam.com

News to me.

But I think I can hear shot rattling around in there???

Sure enough, im trying to cut through a Winchester LongBeard XR now, the whole thing is glued together, I can hardly cut the hull away from the wad but the wad peels away easily from the shot all glued together. Mine has no rattling shot, seems glued very solid. The underside of the overshot card was covered in resin also, thin bits of resin on the outside of the 4 cut very thin wad, they just pour the wet stuff into the shell, crimp it tight and let it harden....

 

[Rock Knocker]

Hard candy sugar is working. Im going to need a better wad just for this, right now with the wads I have I need to add cork cushion wads inside the wad which isnt ideal for the hard candy puck. This really does do a good job as buffer holding everything together, I can tell from the wads after being fired the whole load of shot isnt shifting to the rear of the cup as much.

It really is a head ache, today I got the shot into the cup better without carmel overflowing, all the shot was lined up like it should be and I added a teflon wrap inside the shotcup to prevent carmel from sticking to the wad and the heat from doing damage to the wad, everything wad mica dusted also. Pressure seemed a little dicey, some of the wads looked like the candy puck shifter weird on the cork wad and damaged one side of the wad.... I need better wads. I like the idea of shooting sugar around my forest instead of high tech plastics but I can only really keep the sugar stable for long enough to load two shells and then its hard and unmanageable, whether I let it cool down or if I keep it on the heat, it will cook hard quick also. So I have to make a batch of lead candy for each 2 shells.

 

[RegionRat]

Yup, shotgun recipes are a deeper hole than they get credit for...

When one works, it is a real bummer if part of it become unavailable....

Over here, it took us a while to find a good coyote load. We were happy for a while... then they took lead away from us and it became work all over again... and don't even ask me what we pay for tungsten shot....

 

[Rock Knocker]

Yeah, I havent run into that problem yet. The price is decent for wads but to test each wad you must buy 250 of them, ive got 5 different bags of wads laying around now..... Thats going to last a while, I need to get some more primed hulls, those are going quicker, I just found a pound of Longshot under my passenger seat I forgot buying last month...

Im having fun for now though and learning whats what, 85% of my shooting has been in a 20" cylinder barrel just to see purely what changes I can make. I really havent given shotguns hardly a thought since I joined this site in 2010, thats when I started handloading and handloads are a lot more fun for me to shoot. Loading these is completely different than rifle or pistol.

 

[Rock Knocker]

BP12 wads are great. Im shooting a 1 1/4oz load of #T and #F to get the best fit and im getting some coyote killing patterns at 90 yards with the 26" barrel and factory full choke, at 35 yards half the pellets are on a paper plate.

The reloading manual says thats 1390fps at 9800psi, its one of their lowest listed pressures. I upped the powder charger and started blowing the bottom out of the gas seals. Luckily the BPGS will hold a 20ga cork right in the area that is blowing out, I started fitting and trimming cork last night into some of the gas seals but I havent shot them yet, thats more or less adding a cork cushion to an area with only an air cushion, hopefully that lets me increase pressure a bit.

 

[nakneker]

One of the more successful tactics we’ve used for coyotes is close range shotgunning. Most of the country we hunt is a mix of wide open and thick cedars or sage. The coyotes approach much more cautiously as rule out in the open but when you set in wash choked with sage or a forest choked with cedars they approach without as much caution, sometimes running you over coming in. It’s a lot of fun. Things happen fast sometimes. We use Heavi-shot, 3” T shot. It’s tungsten and has more range than you would think. It’s expensive, I’ve thought about reloading it but we don’t use that much if it so I just keep buying it.

 

[Rock Knocker]

One of the more successful tactics we’ve used for coyotes is close range shotgunning. Most of the country we hunt is a mix of wide open and thick cedars or sage. The coyotes approach much more cautiously as rule out in the open but when you set in wash choked with sage or a forest choked with cedars they approach without as much caution, sometimes running you over coming in. It’s a lot of fun. Things happen fast sometimes. We use Heavi-shot, 3” T shot. It’s tungsten and has more range than you would think. It’s expensive, I’ve thought about reloading it but we don’t use that much if it so I just keep buying it.

I dont have sage or cedars around but plenty of forest, wetland and tall grassy wet prairie areas. I need to get that tungsten sooner than later, in case something happens to supplies, BPI has almost non available and it sounds like TSS is catching on big. Im towards the end of an engine project, i just had to deal with the harsh reality of buying $700 worth of bolts this morning to put everything together, pound fer pound, TSS is about the same as engine bolts! Spring gets busy with work, by summer I will have a few pounds of TSS.