I run deer dogs and usually with a shotgun. Thinking I want to get my son a .410 before next season. I was looking at the tss site. They offer 1buck, 4 buck, fshot and BB for handloading. Has anyone tried making a .410 buckshot load. I was thinking the f shot size would be good, but I do not know how much each pellet weighs or how many pellets will fit in shell. Has anyone tried making a .410 buckshot load? While I have few complaints with the performance of 00 lead, I might try to load some for my 12 gauge as well. Just wanting to see if anyone on here has experience I can learn from.

I have made some from T shot. I can go weigh some tonight and tell you how many in an ounce if you are interested. If I remember right it’s 19 or 20 per ounce.

That would be helpful. I missed the T shot. That might be a better option.

T shot is 24 per oz. If I was doing 410, I'd load BB. BB is supposed to kill to 60-70 yards or more, so it would depend more on pattern density than the effectiveness of the pellet. In other words, I think the BB would kill farther than the pattern would hold up. I don't know off hand how many BBs are in an oz, but the 1 5/8 oz load I put together for my Dad's 20 has 53 pellets in it. (Did the math. It's 32.6)

I switched to TSS this year and don't plan to go back. I'm shooting Ts in my 12 and have killed 2 bucks with it this year. The difference is night and day, and that's compared to a 00 handload that I put a lot of time and $ in to get it to where I wanted it.

According to my scale, 26 T shot weighs 1.038oz. Hope this helps

Thanks

That makes sense, but my concern with using something that small is the size of the wound channel. That is the reason I was leaning towards the larger sizes.. maybe it would be fine, don’t really know.

I know alittle off topic but my little girl killed her first deer running dogs this year with federal #2 buckshot

That is awesome. How old? Reason I ask is that I may be pushing it with mine. He is 4 and has been coming with me since he was a baby. He wants to have a gun . But for obvious reasons I can’t let him have one. I was thinking he might be able to handle a .410 by next year when he is 5, with close supervision of course. Is that just me trying to rush things or is a that old enough?

He has been getting bored with it, but the last time he came with me I killed one while I had him with me, that helped to get some enthusiasm back, and I would like to keep that going. Also have a little girl that will be following his footsteps.

She is 12. Guy in a neighboring dog club got his five years old little boy a mossberg bantam 20ga.
He killed one on youth Saturday . He's a tiny little fellow.

I bought her a browning silver micro 20ga

I think it would be awesome for hogs in wmas and corp land where the season dictates what you can hunt with

I've thought the same thing, TSS even in smaller sizes would be big medicine on hogs at reasonable distances. I notice the Reg. calls out "standard #4 shot or smaller" as allowable arms for shotgun during regular small game season. I've always wondered how the law interprets the word "standard" and if #4 TSS would be included as "standard" I figure I'll ask a game warden the next time I run into one, but its been a few years since I've seen one.

Would a 28 gauge foot the bill a little better than 410? Just making conversation.

A 410 is an experts gun not a kids gun. It frustrates even an average adult shooter on anything but something in the wide open standing still. A 28 would certainly be better but a 20 would be great. Most kids are killing deer with good rests at reasonable distances and probably most of the time with a lot of help from Dad. Hard to do that running dogs. Just my 2 cents.

That was my concern also. I've always been a 00 and 000 kinda guy. Friends who kill a lot more deer than I do with buckshot advised the BB and Ts. So that's where I started. After I thought about it, it made sense (to me anyway). I always shot bigger pellets not for the size of the hole it leaves, but for the downrange energy it carries. TSS does that with smaller pellets. Buckshot pellets don't expand like rifle bullets. They punch holes. I'm not sure it makes a difference if there's a 20 caliber hole through the heart/lungs or a 33 cal hole. And the TSS breaks bones way better than the larger lead pellets.

I found where someone posted that they had done an experiment in ballistic gel with lead and TSS. They used a 00 lead pellet @ 60 yards as a baseline. They said, iirc, that the lead pellet penetrated the gel to 5.9" @ 60 yards. They wrote that the TSS BBs did the same @ 66 yards and the Ts did the same @ 119 yards. That's just penetration. Those harder pellets definitely break bones better than lead.

So look at it this way. If a TSS BB is pretty much equal to a lead 00, and if you can fit 1 oz of them in a 3" 410, it would be like 32 lead 00 coming out of that 410.

The 2 deer I've shot with it were devastating. The first one was @ 70+ yards . The on the second shot it knocked him around and he dove in the gallberries and died. The second one was at a more normal 40 yards. He hit the ground so hard he bounced.

Maybe. I have no experience with tss. My thought is that tss could make the 410 a more capable killer than the 20 gauge with conventional lead. Maybe that is wrong. But that is my starting point. Buckshot77’s experience with it seems to line up with that

ok i got a question and i know its splitting hairs . if you look up buck shot the smallest is #4 its 0.24

tss t shot is 0.20 .


now the regs say buckshot , slugs and round ball .


question is ,,,, yall sure tss t shot is legal to deer hunt with . ?

Tss site refers to it as buckshot. I’m going with that if it ever becomes an issue. Also. It would have to be a hand load. Unless gw wanted to cut open shell there is no way to tell what is in it.

I fact checked myself and that is wrong about tss site. But have seen it somewhere