NEF Pardner 410 Single Shot....... What ammo?

[JAB]

A .410 is not a 12 or 20 gauge but I know that deer have been humanely taken with a .410 slug by people who knew what they were doing.  From what I can gather, the right .410 slug - while it might be lacking compared to a 12 gauge slug - stacks up pretty well against good 'stopper' handgun rounds such as .357 at short ranges.  The lack of rifling, lower initial power (compared to a 12 gauge, etc.) and poor ballistic coefficient result in .410 slugs petering out rather quickly.  My understanding is that is why they are considered to be an 'expert's gun' for hunting deer. - because you have to be able to get close, you have to know when to take the shot and when not to and you have to get a good hit solidly in a kill zone and you would need to use the right ammo.  It is my understanding that the Brenneke slugs in .410 are a world different than more standard Foster type slugs from Remington, Federal, Winchester, etc.  There also seems to be quite a marked difference between the energy levels produced by the 3 inch Magnum Brenneke and the 2 1/4 inch version, natuarally.

 

http://www.brennekeusa.com/cms/410_magnum.html

 

http://www.brennekeusa.com/cms/410_closeencounter.html

 

I have a soft spot for the .410 and especially single shot .410 shotguns as the first firearm I ever owned was a single .410.  I have never taken it into the woods when hunting deer (not that it would matter given my record with deer hunting - or, actually, lack thereof.)  In fact, to my recollection it has never actually killed anything other than plastic bottles and such - I use #5 field loads in one of my 20 gauges or my Rough Rider with the .22 Magnum cylinder installed for nuisance raccoons, possums and the like (and, taken together, those two choices have shuffled several such critters off the mortal coil quickly and humanely - a Hornady Critical Defense .22WMR round will make a big possum DRT.).  In my teens - even after getting a single shot 12 gauge a few years later - I often carried my .410 when just bumming around the woods.  I still love the little fellah and think it would likely do just fine with the right load for controlling small pests like chicken killing possums and 'coons (I mean, if a .22WMR will devastate a good sized possum with good shot placement then why wouldn't a .410?), hunting small game and even (in the right hands, with the right slug/choke combination) for taking Tennessee white tail sized game.

Edited June 16, 2015 by JAB

[MrBrian]

What round would be best for skunks?

[enfield]

.300 Win mag, from 500+ yards

[MrBrian]

Is it possible to call in a drone strike on skunks?

[JAB]

Take off and nuke 'em from orbit.  It's the only way to be sure.

 

I actually think that skunks are pretty creatures - not that I plan to cuddle up to one any time soon.  They are also said to dig up yellow jackets' nests and eat yellow jackets.  I hate yellow jackets.

Edited June 17, 2015 by JAB

[Handsome Rob]

Yup. I wouldn't kill one. Not for the stank, just because they're actually a lot more help than harm. Vis-a-vis bugs etc... Edited June 17, 2015 by robtattoo

[TNWNGR]

Remove the food source or bedding area which drew in the skunk and it'll move on to another location. The only time I've been annoyed with skunks is during their mating season because then they're every where.

[bersaguy]

My first shot gun back when I was a kid was a 410 single shot bolt action made by Revelation and I hunted everything my buddy hunted with his 12 gauge Winchester single shot and we both brought meat home every time we went hunting. I use to own a Mossberg 410 Pump gun that I dearly loved and it got taken in that break in at my home back in 1988. I use to shoot slugs with it a lot. One day my boys and I were out hunting on a friends land and out in the back 40 was an old time refrigerator with that small square freezer in it and I was curious just how powerful the 410 slug might be in the 2.5 inch shell because I could find any slugs in the 3 inch. I back up about 40 feet and caped off a round into the upper section of the fridge. The round impressed me. It went through one side, passed through both sides of freezer and knocked a dent the size of a quarter in the other side. From then on I never under estimated how powerful that round was.................. :up:  :up:   

Edited June 17, 2015 by bersaguy

[JAB]

My first shot gun back when I was a kid was a 410 single shot bolt action made by Revelation and I hunted everything my buddy hunted with his 12 gauge Winchester single shot and we both brought meat home every time we went hunting. I use to own a Mossberg 410 Pump gun that I dearly loved and it got taken in that break in at my home back in 1988. I use to shoot slugs with it a lot. One day my boys and I were out hunting on a friends land and out in the back 40 was an old time refrigerator with that small square freezer in it and I was curious just how powerful the 410 slug might be in the 2.5 inch shell because I could find any slugs in the 3 inch. I back up about 40 feet and caped off a round into the upper section of the fridge. The round impressed me. It went through one side, passed through both sides of freezer and knocked a dent the size of a quarter in the other side. From then on I never under estimated how powerful that round was.................. :up:  :up:   

 

Yeah, just like with smaller caliber handguns I think ammo selection is possibly more important with a .410 than with a 20 or 12 gauge.  A somewhat grisly example:

 

I have probably mentioned on here that one of my degrees is in Anthropology.  I really wanted to go into Forensic Anthropology but when I was in college the only two places one could study for such was at UTK (where I attended undergrad so they wouldn't let me do the graduate program there) and Arizona (and no way in Hades was I moving to Arizona - actually, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Arizona is Hades.)  That and the fact that I'd have to spend another 8 to 10 years in school to be one of thousands of applicants for every job that came open doing what I wanted to do dissuaded me.  I did have a few classes taught by Dr. Bill Bass, though, and he would often show us slides from cases he had worked and tell about the cases.

 

Well, in one case a woman got ticked because her estranged (maybe ex, can't recall for sure) husband had taken up with a much younger woman.  She ended up getting a couple of guys to agree to kill the younger woman.  They bashed the younger woman's head in with a rock, slit her throat and took the body to the house of the woman who wanted her dead where they wrapped the body in a shower curtain and an old blanket.  Then they took the body to dispose of it.  Along the way, they stopped to get gas and could hear the young woman thumping around in the trunk - seems she wasn't dead, after all.  When the girl's body was found and the two guy's caught, they recounted all of this and then went on to tell that, when they got to where they were going to bury the young woman, they wanted to make sure she was dead before burying her.  One of them had a .410 shotgun in the car so, without unwrapping her from the shower curtain and blanket, they shot her with it from pretty much contact distance and then buried her.

 

The problem was that Bass could find no evidence that she had been shot.  Figuring that the guys had no reason to lie about that detail, he had the remains x-rayed and ended up finding one, small shot pellet in the area of one of her vertebrae - not enough to have killed her or to have even done any, real damage.  Then, on a hunch, he had the blanket she was wrapped in x-rayed.  It was full of shot.  The .410 load they had used had failed to even penetrate a couple of layers of blanket - meaning they had likely buried the poor girl alive.

Edited June 18, 2015 by JAB