Shotgun Ammo: The Problem with No. 4 Buckshot for Home Defense

No. 4 buckshot is the smallest buckshot…not to be confused with No. 4 birdshot. No. 4 buckshot denotes a .24 caliber pellet, in a 2¾-inch round. You see between 21 and 27 pellets, with 27 being the most common. That’s a fairly small projectile, but triple the pellets of most OO buckshot cartridges.

People who use No. 4 buckshot often cite as a reason that it’s less likely to over-penetrate in a home. It’s more easily stopped by drywall.

The First Problem

While it’s true that No.4 penetrates less than OO, the pellets can still penetrate up to eight layers of drywall. If I sat at the back of my home, there are only eight layers of drywall between me and the external wall. If you disregard the drywall that leads to my external wall, that’s only seven layers.

No. 4 buck pellets can still penetrate from one side of a house to the other, though admittedly, it’s less likely to leave the house and harm a neighbor. In my situation, I don’t have that worry. My neighbors are far away, but that’s not everyone’s situation.

While No.4 can prevent hitting a neighbor’s house, which is important, it can still penetrate fairly deeply through your own house and put other family members at risk.

With that said, No. 4 buckshot loses a lot of energy through a few layers of drywall. It carries significantly less energy than OO buckshot and No. 4 has less risk of a fatal shot through drywall.

Next Problem: Penetration Through Bad Guys

In a self-defense scenario, we want to fire a cartridge that has the ability to stop a determined attacker. A determined attacker is the worst-case scenario and that’s exactly the situation I want to be most prepared for. I use a shotgun for home defense because I want to stop a determined threat with as few shots as possible.

For a shot to effectively stop an attacker, it needs to penetrate deep enough to hit a vital portion of the body. We have the heart, brain, and spinal cord, which work as “off buttons” for the human body when hit.

To reach those off buttons from any shooting angle — through arms and thick clothing — we need a projectile that will penetrate and the penetration standard is twelve inches through a block of properly calibrated ballistic gel.

No.4 buckshot tends to penetrate between 10 and 13 inches of ballistic gel in testing. That’s just barely on the cusp of acceptable. Personally, I want consistent penetration that goes beyond the minimum amount required.

My main problem with No. 4 buckshot is that, on its best day, it’s barely capable of reaching the vitals. Is it likely that if you shoot someone with a load of No. 4, they’ll stop? Yes. More than likely, any bad who takes 27 pellets of No. 4 shot will decide he’s made some bad life decisions. Still, I want buckshot where every pellet is highly likely to reach something really important with every shot fired.

What The SEAL Said

Many point to historical use like Chief Petty Officer James Patches Watson in Vietnam. To provide a fair assessment of No. 4 buck, I want to include a firsthand use case of the cartridge against enemy combatants. He favored the XM-257 No. 4 buckshot because, as he wrote in his book . . .

My favorite shotgun ammunition was the XM-257 round with the hardened-lead #4 buckshot. The twenty-seven pellets in the shell would knock down any VC I aimed at, which was exactly what I wanted.

Reason Number Two: Accountability and Wide Patterns

The most significant risk of using No. 4 is accountability. You use #4 buckshot because you don’t want to over-penetrate, but the wider pattern and higher pellet count mean you’re more likely to miss your target with some pellets and send them flying.

No. 4 buckshot spreads fairly widely, more so than OO buckshot loads. I love No. 4 buckshot for coyote hunting because it’s easy to hit moving targets thanks to that extra spread.

Chief Watson loved that spread in jungle warfare. As he said . . .

The duckbill attachment on the muzzle spread out the pattern to ninety-six inches wide and twenty-four inches high at thirty yards.

In jungle warfare that’s fantastic. For home defense, not so much. In that environment, the extra spread can be a real problem. You’re accountable for every pellet and the spread means No. 4 is harder to control. Every pellet that misses the target is a potential disaster. 

Testing at 10 and 15 Yards

I tested No.4 side-by-side with OO. Ten yards is likely the furthest you’ll likely shoot for most home defense encounters. At that range, the No.4 patterns stay entirely within an FBI Q target. That’s perfect, right?

Still, OO buckshot is going to pattern more tightly. The wad broke the line (below), and while the wad can be dangerous, I’m not worried about it breaking through drywall and hurting someone.

And all of that assumes the fight goes your way. If that’s your standard, what happens when it’s not optimum and doesn’t go your way? What if the threat provides a smaller target, like if they are using cover?

What if you have to fire a shot rapidly with a compromised aim? That’s perfectly reasonable to expect in a home defense scenario. If you have a compromised shot, you’re potentially sending pellets into your home, and the more pellets you send, the worse the situation could be.

Either way, shooting No. 4, you have to deal with lots of errant pellets. Here’s a shot fired at ten yards into an 8-inch circle.

That leaves more than half a dozen pellets outside of the 8-inch target.

Here’s what standard OO buckshot looks like at ten yards in an 8-inch target. All the pellets land where I want them.

For the next test, I set up a small popper target with a piece of cardboard behind it to act as “drywall.” I covered any holes in the cardboard with blue tape. At ten yards, I fired a load of OO buck into the target and observed any errant pellets.

There were none. With the No. 4 load, I ran the same test, and four pellets missed, meaning four errant pellets through your drywall.

Going Further

The longest shot I can fire in my house is 18 yards. That’s outside the norm, but I’m not the only person with an open floor plan. Let’s try a pattern at 15 yards, which is about as far as a standard home defense shot is likely to get.

On an FBI Q target, the No. 4 had six missed pellets. That’s six pellets traveling through your house.

With buckshot at fifteen yards, I shot at an eight-inch circle; three total were outside the circle, but remained on the piece of printer paper. A final pellet landed outside the paper. The difference worth noting is that the pattern is still small enough to fit onto the piece of printer paper, but it landed high.

With No. 4 at 15 yards, 16 of the 27 pellets landed inside the circle with five more landing on the paper. That means six pellets landed completely off paper.

I repeated the popper test at 15 yards. Again, all of the OO buckshot hit the target, with just the wad hitting the cardboard.

Six of the No. 4 pellets missed the popper. Those misses weren’t in one particular direction, but went left, right, and high, surrounding the target. Again, people use No. 4 buckshot to help protect their loved ones, but those patterns put them at risk.

Hornady makes a Versatite wad for the No. 4, but it’s listed as a varmint cartridge, and that should give you a clue as to why it’s not advertised for tactical or defensive use. However, it does likely pattern better than standard No.4 buck.

Recoil

I only know of one No. 4 tactical load. It’s the Barnes load which runs $4.20 a round, and the Barnes OO didn’t impress me, so I doubt the 21-pellet No. 4 buckshot is all that great.

Since most No. 4 cartidges are sporting loads, there aren’t any reduced recoil loads. As a result, recoil can be more stout than a dedicated reduced-recoil tactical OO load.

I ran simple double-tap drills with No. 4 at 1300ish FPS and reduced recoil OO buckshot at 1200 FPS. The recoil difference is noticeable both to my shoulder and to my performance.

I could put two No. 4 buckshot rounds on target in 1.02 seconds. With standard reduced-recoil buckshot, I could do that in .82 seconds. Those numbers don’t matter as much as the split time score, which is .11 of a second and shows the true difference the recoil makes. The overall time factors into a low-ready presentation, which can be easily variable.

It’s also important to note I am a fairly large person, and I have a lot of experience with shotguns, including professional instruction, so I handle recoil better than a smaller, less experienced person.

My Choice

My home defense load of choice is Federal FliteControl, 8-pellet buckshot. It’s got low recoil and an extremely tight pattern.

Here’s the pattern at 10 yards

Here it is at 15 yards.

If you want my advice, use Federal FliteControl OO buckshot and don’t miss your target.

Don’t miss, but misses can happen, right? If a miss occurs, do you have more than 8 layers of drywall between you and your loved ones? If not, wouldn’t it be better to have fewer pellets flying through your home in a tighter pattern than more pellets in a looser pattern?

If overpenetration is your primary concern, then a shotgun is not the weapon for you. An AR-15 in .223/5.56 is the best option when overpenetration is a concern.

If I were in charge of Federal, I’d bring back the No. 1 FliteControl load. It offers the most efficient home-defense buckshot load. If I were in charge of any ammo company, I’d produce a reduced-recoil No. 1 load with some form of tight-patterning wad.

Until a load like that hits the market, I’m going to stick with OO Federal FliteControl.