different shot gun ammunition

[siggerette]

how many different types of shotgun ammo is there?? i picked up a box of clay and a box of im guessing bird shot?> or whatever multi purpose load is. i remember taking apart a bird shot and another shell with like the taditional .177 bbs in it, what would that one be called or used for. anyways school me on 12g shotgun ammo please!!

[Rover]

How many different types? A million and 3.

Wikipedia actually has a pretty good break-down of the different types of shot and and what size the projectiles are.

The basic shells are all pretty much the same, the number is just a marker for how big the pellets in the shell are. Bird loads and target loads many times have the same size pellets, but different powders, powder charges, wads etc to make the load perform a certain way. Same thing with the bigger pellets used for turkey, deer, humans, bowling pins. Total shot weight also plays a part, you'll see a weight listed on most shells, but buck-shot usually lists an exact number of pellets in the shell, that's how much lead they put in there, a 1.120 oz. load of #8 shot has a bunch more little pellets than a .75, or 1 oz. load, so you get more lead in the air, at the cost of greater recoil.

Then there's slugs, which are more like a bullet you'd fire from a pistol or rifle than a shot-gun shell. They come in different weights, same as shot, but the weight refers to a single projectile. There's also a bunch of different shapes of slugs designed to do different things at different ranges, unlike shot which is always round. There are also shells that have both a slug and some shot in them, these are designed for home defense instead of hunting.

The next most common kind of round are the "less than lethal" stuff like rubber bullets, sand-bags, rock salt etc.

Then the really oddball stuff like fletchets, fireballs, and all sorts of crazy other things. Really, you can put anything you want in a shell and shoot it out the end of a shotgun.

So on top of infinite variables in the shell type, you then add in bore size, chokes and barrel length which all greatly effect how each shell performs and you end up with millions upon millions of combinations of ways to put holes in things.

[j1133s]

how many different types of shotgun ammo is there?? i picked up a box of clay and a box of im guessing bird shot?> or whatever multi purpose load is. i remember taking apart a bird shot and another shell with like the taditional .177 bbs in it, what would that one be called or used for. anyways school me on 12g shotgun ammo please!!

As previous poster said, there are alot. So you have a lot of coices in picked the shell best for your purpose. For example you waht to break clays (since you bought a box), the optimal is breaking a bird into 3 or 4 pieces, so pick the shell that does that at the range and choke you shoot.

[5150bronco]

there is also a lot of specialty ammo too.