Comments, Questions & Answers

From our March/April 2025 issue

It’s time again for my annual Q&A column. In this installment I’m also including a couple of comments, such as this one to start . . . .

I have a large volume of reloading data that list loads for which the components were not available when I received the accompanying publication. Today I received your manual Advanced Lead & Bismuth Shot Handloading Manual. I was pleasantly surprised to see updates for the past three years included. The “2022 Update” with a list of replacement wads is wonderful! Thank you very much for the data and the updated information. This is the first time I have seen anyone put such effort into their work, and it is refreshing.

Thank you very much. Periodically adding the “Updates” to my reloading manuals is both unique to the reloading world and a great deal of extra work, especially regarding answering questions about component substitutions. Most readers greatly appreciate them, but you’d be surprised how many never take the time to read them at all and then call me with questions that are clearly answered in the “Updates.” It is the same with the educational information at the beginning of the manuals. Makes one wonder if reading itself is becoming passé.

Thank you for your recent column “TSS Shot Revisited” (Nov/Dec ’24). It is refreshing to read a well-written discussion of shotgun ballistics instead of the thinly veiled marketing hype common in most supposedly objective magazine articles. I especially appreciated your analogy of shooting turkeys in the head being more akin to big-game hunting with rifles and bullets and very different from hitting birds on the wing with a cloud of pellets.

What really fascinates me is your finding that choking has little effect on TSS. I suspect that the TSS pellets are so hard that they remain spherical and are so dense that the slight aerodynamic forces from turbulence or pellet-to-pellet interaction are negligibly small. The whole cloud exits the muzzle together and simply stays together. This yields a tight pattern and a short shotstring. Then when you mixed some bismuth with the TSS, the patterns opened up. You specifically commented that this load also had a longer shotstring.

The failure reality that has revealed itself trying to use pure TSS loads for wingshooting, especially at distances less than 40 yards, is that the pellets are so hyper-round, uniform and hard that they do not deform in the shell/barrel/choke before leaving the muzzle; and as a result they produce both super-tight pattern diameters and super-short shotstrings. None of the chokes currently available to shotgunners that I tested seem to produce any of the normal expected results—i.e., pattern enlargement and shotstring lengthening—that they do with deformable pellets such as lead and bismuth or already slightly deformed and imperfect pellets such as steel and HEVI-Shot. The only solution I see is for TSS to be marketed with loads of mixed TSS pellet shapes that are less uniform in diameter, which will give the shot charge the diversity of pellet shapes and sizes that will result at muzzle exit in larger-diameter patterns and longer shotstrings. The only other way is to mix TSS with deformable shot, especially bismuth or lead.

I recently read a marketing blurb re: Remington Premier Bismuth Cartridges wherein it is claimed that the new bismuth blend solves the characteristic frangibility of bismuth shot. In your opinion, how does the Remington bismuth compare to the RotoMetals bismuth?

There are only two things that can be done to mitigate the inherent frangibility of bismuth shot. One is to increase the tin content of the tin alloy in a bismuth pellet. The highest tin content I have tested is 6% in the bismuth shot made by RotoMetals and Kent. All of the bismuth shot I have tested that has a lower tin content has displayed a higher frangibility rate. And this includes copper- and nickel-plated bismuth pellets. The other thing that can be done to mitigate frangibility is to buffer the bismuth pellets, which Winchester does in its Xtended Range Bismuth factory loads and the recipes do in my reloading manuals.

Always enjoy your articles. I recently purchased an expensive Italian 28-gauge over/under with 2¾" chambers and fixed chokes: Improved Cylinder & Modified. My plan is to use RST bismuth No. 5s on pheasants and chukar and Federal No. 7 steel on quail and doves. Patterns will be tight. What do you think?

Thanks for reading my stuff. As to your ammo choice, from my lethality testing on wild birds and due to the lesser density of bismuth compared to lead, you will need bismuth No. 4s for pheasants; and bismuth 5s have tested fine for chukar. Steel 7s become marginal on doves much past 30 yards, and many hunters elect to use steel 6s for 30-plus-yard shots on doves. All of this has been confirmed from my X-rays and necropsies. The larger-pellet-size compensation with bismuth is needed for penetration sufficiency, due to its lesser density (9.69 g/cc) than lead (11.3 g/cc).

Also, concerning pheasant shots beyond 35 yards with bismuth, your No. 4s should be buffered, due to bismuth’s proclivity for fragmentation. I don’t believe RST makes buffered bismuth loads, so use the company’s unbuffered loads for 35-yard-or-less pheasant shots, and buy Winchester buffered bismuth No. 4s for pheasant shots greater than 35 yards. If you don’t, you’ll experience high wounding rates at shots exceeding 35 yards.

I have been reading your columns, and my past understanding with 7/8-oz 20-gauge lead loads was that they were considered square loads. Comment please.

The “square charge” mantra is an old-time, 200-years-out-of-date theory of how lead shot could best be protected from deformation at the time in shotgunning when there were no shot wrappers or shot cups to contain the shot charges. Shot was just dumped raw and unprotected on top of cushion wads. If the shot charge was about as tall as it was wide, a higher percentage of shot resided in the middle of the shot column and was thus less exposed to bore scrub. This is totally irrelevant now with modern shot wrappers and shot cups and especially with non-deformable, hard shot types like steel and HEVI-Shot.