Comes Now Hortonium

From our January/February 2025 issue

Ready for another potential shotshell-pellet material? Here’s the latest entry: Hortonium. It’s a patent-applied-for composite material that has been introduced and is being promoted primarily in the UK as a replacement for lead shot and small-caliber bullets. Its inventor is Horton & Sons, a Birmingham, England, gunmaker.

This table, comparing Hortonium with other shot types, appears on the Horton & Sons website.

There are two versions of the material “modestly” named by their creator Hortonium 1 and Hortonium 2. In May 2022 Horton & Sons filed for a patent on Hortonium 1, and in November 2023 the company agreed to a joint venture with Interpower Induction, which has manufacturing facilities in Almont, Michigan; the UK; and India. Since neither pellet samples nor details on what composite metals comprise Hortonium were available at press time, my intention here is primarily to make readers aware that the material exists and what claims Horton is making for it. Here is what I’ve found so far.

Horton & Sons does not produce loaded ammunition or even bullets or shot, but it will supply interested ammunition manufacturers with Hortonium raw material from which they can then manufacture their own shot or bullets. On the company’s website (hortonguns.com) is a Horton-authored table (shown here) comparing the shot types lead, Hortonium, steel, bismuth, tungsten composite and copper. This table is a combination of objective facts and Horton opinions. Hortonium is presented as slightly harder than lead but slightly softer than bismuth. Lead is correctly presented as about an 11 g/cc-density pellet, with bismuth less dense at about 9.5 followed by Hortonium at about 9.0. Steel shot typically measures about a 7.9 density. The density range for tungsten-composite shot listed in the Horton table varies only from 10.5 for Kent’s Tungsten Matrix to 12.0 for HEVI-Shot. The Horton folks seem to have overlooked HW-13 and other available tungsten-composite pellets available in the US that possess 13 to 15 g/cc densities plus TSS at 18 g/cc.

Where Horton opinion starts to color the comparison issues is a comment on the value of the malleability of a shotshell pellet. Lead, Hortonium and bismuth are shown as being very malleable with the claim that this provides “better kinetic energy of the shot transfer[ring] to the quarry, resulting in cleaner kills.” This is an old-time claim for soft-shot performance. The Horton folks either ignore or are unaware of the extremely extensive lethality tests run in the US from 1968 through 2012 and published in scientific, peer-reviewed literature comparing the performance of lead to steel shot for taking thousands of wild North American ducks, geese, ring-necked pheasants, doves, turkeys and quail and necropsying and x-raying the bagged birds. Bottom line: There remain no published scientific lethality test data on birds thus far that supports the Horton claim that the “energy transfer” belief for soft pellets providing superior lethality on birds versus hard shot types is true. It remains little more than another old-time, unproven shotgunning belief.

Another column in that table presents as fact the Horton opinion regarding the maximum choke that can be used per shot type, claiming that only lead, Hortonium and bismuth can be used with Full chokes and that steel, tungsten-composite and copper can be used only with Half/Modified chokes at tightest. This is yet another belief that has been disproven by objective testing and applies principally to the choke strengths of vintage-type shotguns. But the rest of the world has moved on and primarily uses shotguns made from stronger steels and greater wall thicknesses, particularly in the choke area, than vintage shotguns. Such modern shotguns also employ screw-in chokes, which can be made stronger yet. Hunters the world over using such guns and chokes are commonly shooting hard shot types like steel and tungsten-composite through Full chokes; not experiencing choke or barrel damage; and successfully killing hundreds of thousands of birds annually, especially at long range. I won’t quibble with the Horton table of the current “permitted wad” by shot type except to say that the trend is toward the use in the near future of fiber and cardboard wad materials plus truly biodegradable, plant-based wads for all shot types.

There is an interesting video from the Horton folks employing what they call a “drop test” (the correct term is “deformation test”) on one pellet each of lead, Hortonium, steel and bismuth. In it a ball-peen hammer of undisclosed weight falls an undisclosed distance onto pellets supported by a steel anvil. You can visually see the difference in how much each of the three pellet types is deformed by the hammer fall, with the bismuth pellet smashing into pieces. None of the deformations are measured in this one-pellet sample-size “test,” nor are the actual hardness values presented for any of the shot types.

Another video features Steve Horton shooting a transparent shotshell load containing an undisclosed shot-charge weight and size of Hortonium pellets at a few clay targets thrown rising steeply upward and straight away from a clay-target thrower at his feet. Unfortunately, because the clays leave the camera field of view, one cannot see what happens to the targets. There is also a one-round “pattern test” of an undisclosed shot-charge weight and size of Hortonium on a metal plate at an undisclosed distance that is not counted but eyeballed, and then simply declared to be “pretty good.” No explanation is given as to the manufacturing and loading source of the Hortonium pellets in the loads; they just magically appear without explanation.

A third video features Steve Horton holding forth on his current opinions on several shotgunning topics. An important one is the price point of Hortonium shot, which Horton estimates “should be within 10 percent of bismuth shot.” “Estimate” and “should” mean“maybe,” so we don’t really know what the final price will be. Bismuth shot, by the way, is something that the Horton people disdain, claiming fragmentation of bismuth pellets is the norm. No empirical scientific test data is ever presented to substantiate this claim, nor is any effort made to differentiate between the range of fragmentation rates that exist among the various bismuth-pellet products now out there with their various mitigating tin-alloy contents.

Strangely, nowhere in the material I’ve found on Hortonium is the shot claimed to be nontoxic. It is implied as being such but would have to be tested and proven so to be approved as a nontoxic-shot option in the US. Lastly, in the peekaboo views of Hortonium shot loaded in clear hulls, the shot appears to be silver- colored, quite out of round and variable in pellet size.

It appears that Hortonium shot is much like bismuth shot, especially in claimed price point. But recently the cost of bismuth shot’s raw materials—bismuth and tin—have increased substantially, which has not shown up in 2024 stocks of bismuth loads and loose shot for reloading. When those stocks are exhausted, however, the price of bismuth loads and shot stand to jump significantly. If the secret materials forming Hortonium shot do not similarly increase in cost, that will give Hortonium an attractive entrée into the market.

When and if Hortonium is further along and pellets become available for testing, I will report my test findings rather than just mention the claims and speculation regarding Hortonium that I’ve encountered so far.

To consult with Tom Roster or to order his new Advanced Lead & Bismuth Shot Handloading Manual, his current HEVI-Shot and HW-13 reloading manual, or custom loading data, contact Tom Roster, 1190 Lynnewood Blvd., Klamath Falls, OR 97601; 541-884-2974, tomroster@charter.net.