Duck Hunting Ammo 2025 – steel is real 20 years on

Written by: Richie Cosgrove

Almost all hunters have now accepted the reality that non-toxic/non lead ammunition is here to stay for waterfowling in New Zealand – right on down to the smallest 410. That is political reality, and no amount of lobbying will change that. The vast majority have been using 12 gauge steel shot for many If used in the right way it will kill ducks just as good as the old lead ammo did. A lot of younger hunters will have grown up with and only used steel, and to them it’s a non-issue.

There is a lot of misinformation and marketing hype floating round out there about waterfowl ammo. The problem with shotgunning is it’s nowhere near as exact a science as say rifle shooting, which allows people to form opinions that aren’t statistically valid. A shotgun is a relatively imprecise tool with considerable variability from shot to shot, so unless you repeat tests over and over until you have enough results to be statistically significant, it is easy to come up with the wrong conclusion. Even bad ammo and the wrong choke will drop birds cleanly occasionally. Let’s examine what it takes to kill a duck consistently.

You do not kill it with speed, energy, shocking power or any of the other words you often hear bandied about.

Its pretty simple really – you must put a pellet through a vital area/organ of your target - the brain, spinal column back to its chest, and the heart and lungs. One pellet in the right place will kill quickly, but multiple hits ensure a higher probability of a more instantaneous result. One pellet penetrating the lungs or heart stopping blood circulation is definitely a dead bird, but it may well be able to glide a short distance in death. If another pellet hits the spine or breaks a wing bone out to the first joint, the bird will fall out of the sky right there. Each pellet that hits will also transfer energy to the bird and its organs – to the point you can actually shock and knock a bird out of the sky if you hit it with enough pellets.

There are two important criteria you need to meet with any shotgun/load combination to be sure of putting pellets through the vital organs – and that is penetration and density. You need to have sufficient pattern density to hit the vital area with a well centred bird in the first place, and you need to have sufficient penetration to ensure those pellets get through to the vital organs.

There are plenty of vital zones on offer here with this pair of mallards at 30 yards, and almost any combination of load and choke will do the job.

Now unfortunately these two criteria work against each other – simply increasing one, will decrease the other. Bigger pellets give you more penetration, but in any given shot weight there will be less of them, reducing pattern density and the chances of hitting a vital organ. Smaller pellets will give you more pellets and more chance of hitting a vital area, but with not enough penetration to puncture it - especially on shot angles that require more penetration like a quartering or directly going away shot.

You must put a pellet through a vital area/organ of your target - the brain, spinal column back to its chest, and the heart and lungs. The wing butts will also result in the bird falling from the sky, but you still need a pellet in a vital organ to kill it.

These simple parameters apply to all types of shot – lead, steel, bismuth or the various tungsten composites. The specific gravities (gm/cm³) and malleability (hardness) of the different shot types also makes a difference. Lead’s specific gravity is about

11gms/cm³. Steel is about 8gms/cm³, and so you get roughly 30 per cent more pellets of the same size for the same weight of shot. But you need to up your pellets by at least one size to get the same pellet weight as lead, and even more to get the same penetration, as the steel pellet of the same weight will have a larger frontal area. See the table below for pellet diameters and weights in the most likely sizes used for ducks, in both the USA and English sizes.

We will be talking US sizes for the rest of this article as that is now the most universally accepted nomenclature. The generally accepted rule was to go up two sizes from what you used with lead to get comparable results with steel out to about 45 yards. You can see in theory you only need to go up about 1½ sizes to get the same weight, but two sizes to get the same penetration with the same impact velocity due to the larger diameter as we said above. Some think you just need to drive the shot charge a lot faster to get more penetration, but this only works at close range. A round sphere like a shotgun pellet is a very inefficient projectile, and the faster you push it, the greater the air resistance, and the faster if slows down.

If you compare two loads of the same shot size, but one doing 1400fps and the other 1550, the 150fps velocity advantage of the faster load at the muzzle has reduced to only 38fps by the time they both get to 40 yards, and by 60 yards it will only be going 28fps faster – you’ll get a far greater shot to shot velocity variation than this in the same packet of shells, so some of the nominal 1400fps loads will actually be going faster than the 1550fps loads by the time they get to the duck!

The other disadvantage is very high velocity almost always opens up patterns, again reducing the chance of hitting a vital organ. The last disadvantage with the very high velocity loads is recoil – their “felt recoil” which is a direct result of their recoil velocity is significantly greater than slower loads, even to the extent that they jolt your head so fast that you get a mild form of concussion.

The one and only advantage is faster loads reduce theoretical lead, which if you regularly shoot behind your target may be of some help to you!

So as with so much of life, choosing the best load/choke combination for waterfowling is a compromise, trying to juggle the best balance of penetration verses pattern density!

The world’s leading waterfowl shotgun ballistician, American Tom Roster, has conducted extensive tests for major US ammunition companies and more than 40 wildlife agencies worldwide, including the shooting, Xray and post mortems on over 28,000 game birds.

Tom Roster was one of the world's leading shotgun ballisticians. Pictured here performing an x-ray on a shot canada goose.

Tom’s results are the most conclusive scientific research ever conducted on waterfowling lethality anywhere in the world. Tom came up with simple rule of thumb criteria for both pattern density and penetration/shot size with steel shot – firstly you need an absolute minimum of 90 pellets in a 30 inch circle at any range to ensure a good chance you’ll hit a vital area on mallard size ducks, and secondly you need the minimum penetration achieved by a #3 steel pellet at 45 yards to ensure puncturing vital organs – at closer ranges a smaller pellet will have enough penetration, at longer ranges you’ll need a larger pellet with the commensurate trade off in pattern density.

Steel #3 at 1400fps muzzle velocity shot into ballistic gel at 40 yards produced an average of 4 inch penetration.

You can clearly see here a dense pattern of steel shot about to impact, and you can also see that despite looking like its well ahead of the bird, it still hit amidships - its pretty hard to shoot too far in front so get that gun out past the duck's bill and keep on swinging

Tom also states that as we’ve said already, high velocity steel loads over 1450 fps are counterproductive, and generally just marketing hype dreamt up by salesmen not waterfowl hunters. 

So simply, a 3 inch 1¼ oz load of #3s containing a nominal 191 pellets doing about 1400fps is the best all round duck load out to 45 yards. This covers by far the vast majority of shooting situations, and is plenty far enough for most shotgunners shooting skills. A half choke pattern which puts 60 per cent of its pellets into the 30 inch circle at 40 yards will still easily hold the 90 pellet minimum to 45 yards, and a 70 per cent full choke pattern with quality ammo to 50 yards. (left image below)

Conversely the often touted 3 inch 1 1/8oz load of #2s containing a nominal 140 pellets doing 1550fps or faster will struggle to hold a 60 per cent half choke pattern and will fail to meet Tom’s minimum of 90 pellets at 40 yards. It will have enough penetration for 50 yards plus, but the pattern density only for 35 yards, and this sort of performance can lead to steel shot’s unjustified reputation for wounding. (Right image above)

You’ll notice we have talked about a 60 per cent half choke/70 per cent full choke pattern, which is not necessarily the same as the pattern your half/full choke will throw. The only way to find out how far your load and various chokes will hold the 90 pellet minimum density is to pattern them! Try your quarter, half and even your ¾ choke if you are wanting to maximise your range.

Patterning is a pretty simple operation. The industry standard talked about here is the percentage of the total number of pellets that hit inside a 30 inch circle at 40 yards. Put up a sheet of paper or cardboard at 40 yards with an aiming mark in the middle. Stand back at 40 yards from muzzle to paper and fire at the centre. Draw a 30 inch circle around the densest part of the pattern, and count how many pellets hit inside it. Divide this by the total number in the load, x 100, and that gives you your pattern percentage. You need to fire at least three and take the average of each load/choke combination you are testing. There are also videos on Fish and Game NZ’s Youtube that show you how to do it using a special target they supply but it only has a 27 inch circle so you need to multiply the number of pellets you get in their 27 inch circle by 1.2 to get an idea of what you might get in the 30 inch circle industry standard.

The test equipment. The Oehler 43 Ballistic Laboratory, and a 28 inch test barrel on a Beretta Xtreme2. Notice the sissy pad. I fired a hell of a lot of rounds in this testing.

All ammunition, even if of the same shot size, pay load and velocity, is not created equal. We have tested all available waterfowling loads in New Zealand extensively across our Oehler Ballistic Laboratory with velocity, pressure and pattern testing facilities, and the variation in performance just has to be seen to be believed.

The quality/roundness of shot, the pressure generated to achieve the velocity, the wad column, burnt powder residue and the pattern performance can all vary hugely from one brand to another. Inside 30 yards, pretty much any ammo will kill ducks satisfactorily, and the “discount” ammo will work just fine. But once you start pushing 40 yards and beyond, then your choke/load performance really starts to count. This is where the quality of your ammo becomes important.

Good hunting, good shooting and good ammo produces results - the very last greenheads shot by oneof NZ's greatest waterfowlers - the late "Ziggy" on closing day 2019.

Steel shot wad construction is also crucial, with the best designed to put the brakes on and drop behind leaving the payload to do its job without rolling over and trapping any pellets or lengthening the shot string. They also must encase all the pellets until they’ve exited the muzzle - very important with hard steel pellets as they must not come into contact with the bore.

The steel has several tasks to perform, firstly entrapping all the pellets until they exit the muzzle so they don't come into contact with the bore, and secondly dropping away from the shot charge so they don't disturb the pattern.

So what do we use for our waterfowling across the various hunting situations and ranges? For anything inside 40 yards in normal conditions a 2 3/4oz load of 4’s doing around 1400fps though a quarter choke throwing a 60 per cent pattern does the job emphatically with minimum recoil and fuss. From 40 to 50 yards and even at closer ranges in challenging conditions such as strong winds on big water, a 1 1/4oz load of 3’s throwing a 70 per cent pattern out of a half choke is our go to. Once ranges push a full 50 yards and out to another 10 yards maximum, we’ll use the long range thumper – the 3.5 inch 1 3/8 and 1 ½ oz 2’s throwing at least a 70 per cent pattern out of a half or three quarter choke. Now this load has heaps of penetration and if it holds a killing pattern is a genuine 50 yard plus duck load. These last are only used for follow up shots on birds that have already been hit but are still flying. And you should not be attempting to shoot at 50 yard plus birds unless this is the case and you are trying to bring them down dead. The recoil of the 3½'s is so severe you do not want to fire too many of them anyway!

You’ll notice all these loads I’m recommending are doing the same velocity – plus or minus 50fps. This is important to consider as you need to keep your pellet flight times constant, or it affects your theoretical lead and the sight picture you need to centre the bird. There are enough challenges as it is in wingshooting without making it harder for yourself by shooting a range of ammunition with widely varying speeds.

The other important consideration is target presentation. Learn to be a better hunter, using decoys and calling to present the birds head on with the vital areas exposed as much as possible. Do not attempt to shoot at birds going away at even moderate ranges, as the distance increases rapidly and you have the double whammy of needing far greater penetration to reach the vitals while your pattern is running out of density.

As with most things, a little pre-season preparation on your loads and chokes will pay dividends in birds bagged and satisfaction gained!

Hot barrels for May 3!