In contrast, most .410 bore guns will weigh much less and because of the slimmer barrel may be very muzzle light.  Some people would say "whippy."  Such a gun doesn't follow through nearly as well as a muzzle-heavy gun.  This failure to follow through causes frequent misses, and then human nature takes over.  If a shooter is used to breaking 24's and 25's at skeet and breaks a 17 or 15 with the .410, he must conclude it is a poor gun for the job and have no confidence in it.  To assuage his pride he may return to his big bores with never a backward glance and condemn .410's forever.  On the other hand, he may try it a few more times and eventually get used to the differences.  Once this happens, his scores will come up, he will get some confidence and probably discover that he averages only a little worse with the .410 than with the bigger guns.  I have seen one case where a fairly ordinary shooter broke his highest Skeet score ever when I loaned him my .410 Skeet gun.  It was his first experience with the .410 and he broke a 22.

     When my wife and I were courting, I started her on Skeet shooting with a Winchester Model 42 Skeet gun with a Cutts Compensator on it.  She had never shot and I didn't want to have to teach her the fundamentals of lead and follow through using a gun whose kick and roar would make her flinch.  In order to be intellectually honest with you, when I bought her a gun of her own, I chose a lightweight Remington 1100 in 20 gauge with improved cylinder choke.  But this, mind you, was after she had learned to shoot.  When our daughters began shooting, I started them with a .410.

     There is a rifled slug load for the 2 1/2-inch shell.  Everyone says it is inadequate for deer.  I have never heard of anyone endorsing the .410 slug as adequate for anything but small animals.  The slug is advertised as weighing 1/5 oz.  This works out to 87.5 grains and the advertised velocity is 1830 feet per second.  The resulting muzzle energy is 650 foot pounds.  This performance is nearly identical to a 40-caliber muzzle-loading rifle using a .39 inch diameter pure lead round ball at the same velocity.  The .410 slug's muzzle energy equals or exceeds the muzzle energy of the hottest .357 Magnum round from a six-inch barrel, and the standard .38-40 or .44-40 from a rifle barrel.  Any of these latter would be regarded as at least marginally adequate for deer.  Why a gun developing this level of energy should be regarded as inadequate for deer, at least at close range, is beyond me. 

     The only story I have on the .410 slug's effectiveness on deer is second-hand.  However, I regard it as credible.  The wife of an acquaintance of an acquaintance of mine killed a "big deer" with one shot using the little .410 slug.  In local parlance, "big deer" means a big deer, probably more than 150 pounds.

     I have never shot any game with these little slugs, but when I was kid, I shot one into an old excelsior-filled hassock to see how deep it would penetrate.  To my complete surprise, it penetrated entirely through the hassock, which was more than 18" thick, and took a thumb-size chunk out of a cinder block in the wall behind it.  (My father, were he alive to read this, would now know what caused the hole in the basement wall at out house.  Of course, if he were still alive, I would not write this paragraph, because he would beat the hell out of me.  Justifiably, I might add.)

     In any event, when I hunt small game with the .410 during deer season, I carry a couple of these slugs with me.  Were I to see a deer at close enough range to surely place the little slug in his heart-lung area, I would not hesitate to try it.  Incidently, this is one area where the .410 has the advantage over the 28 gauge.  No slugs are presently available in American 28-gauge shells.  They once were, but were discontinued some time after World War II.

     My old Lyman Reloading Manual #44 shows a load using a heavy slug made out of Lyman number 2 alloy.  Number 2 alloy is much harder than the pure lead recommended for other slugs.  Lyman's .410 slug weighed 238 grains (almost certainly a 50 year old miss-print in Lymans manual, should be 138 grains, see LymanSlugs) and the highest velocity shown is 1565 feet per second.  The muzzle energy of this load is 1294 foot pounds.  This should be as effective as the factory 20-gauge slug load.  Lyman has not catalogued the .410 slug mould for many years.

     Most .410 bore guns have the advantages of lightness and compactness.   They are easy to carry in the field and are quick to shoulder when game appears.  Noise and recoil are the lightest on any shotgun gauge.  In doubles, the barrels are not so wide as the larger gauges,  Additionally, the shells are lighter and more compact than any larger gauge.  This can be viewed two ways.  You can carry more of them than a larger gauge or carry the same number and have room and weight for something else.

     Does all of this mean the .410 bore is the ideal all around gun?  Not quite.  However, if you are willing to limit yourself to game that can be killed inside of about thirty yards with shot sizes on the order of 7 1/2 or 9's, it will prove quite good.  If you are afraid of recoil your shooting might even improve.

     A .410 would not be my first choice if I were going to shoot deer, turkey, waterfowl or anything requiring shots beyond about thirty yards or shot sizes larger than 6's.  However, within these limitations the .410 is effective.

     What does this leave you with?  Well, I live in central Virginia.  Small game here consists of rabbits, squirrels, bobwhite quail, ruffed grouse, doves, and woodcock.  I have taken all of them except grouse with the .410 and have found it entirely adequate.  In fact, in dense cover I have shot quail and woodcock as close as 10 to 15 yards.  At ranges this short even the 3-inch .410 and the 28 gauge amount to overkill.

     I have concluded that a .410 bore gun with an open choke and small shot is a very effective little gun.  But then I reached that conclusion a long time before I used bigger guns.

                            *******

Standard lead shot loads for .410 bore shells:

     2 1/2 inch shell   Max  1/2      1200fps   14,000 psi

     3 inch shell       Max  11/16     1135 fps  15,000 psi

Reprinted curtesy of :- The Gun Digest, 37th edition 1983, Author :- Marshall Williams.
Published by Krause Publications, 700 E. State Street, lola, WI 54990-0001. Phone 800-258-0929.
www.krause.com

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