What Shotgun Shells to stock up on.

**Pete D.** · March 15th, 2010, 06:10 PM

Don't cut the barrel down. Your most likely (but still highly unlikely) use for your shotgun since there aren't any zombies will be to provide food for your family. You are limiting the effectiveness of that gun if you shorten the barrel.
There's a number of good reasons why hunting shotguns have longer barrels. THAT will be your primary use. That type of ammo is what you should stock up. If you stock up a whole bunch of buckshot, you are gonna have a whole lot of ammo that you will never use. Want to get 10 rounds? OK. Beyond that is a waste. Slugs ----at least you can hunt with slugs a bit more effectively.

About shooting through the walls and penetration and knowing where your kids are. That's fine as long as the hypothetical bad guy stays where you want him to be. What if you catch him at the kid's bedroom door.... and you miss?
Pete

**scoutjoe** · March 17th, 2010, 08:55 AM

I like #4 buck, but 00 is generally easier to find. Plus its what the military runs so it was the easiest to stock up on. That being said I have about 500 rds of 00, maybe 100 slugs but much much more in 7 1/2 and 8 shot since its much cheaper to shoot.

Shot sizes

**Noah_Zark** · March 17th, 2010, 06:34 PM

Originally Posted by billamj

If I could only have one I would have to go with #4 buck. It is small enough that it won't completely blow a rabbit to ribbons and I know that I wouldn't want to face 21 .24 caliber balls flying at me.

+1.

Either #4 Buck, #2 Bird, or BB. A 1 oz-plus column of any of the three shot sizes from an 870 Magnum will do the job on two-legged varmints at effective shotgun ranges. There's more potential for damage from significantly more pellets of reasonable mass than from 00 Buck. The "Box O' Truth" site did a study on this question that mirrored the experiments I carried out myself in the late 70s and early 80s on interior and exterior residential walls and fresh road kill. #2 bird and BB went right through two interior walls and right through the exterior wall, siding and all, of an abandoned house that was slated for practice burn by the local firebugs, er, VFD. I got there a couple weeks early.

Noah