# .410 Magnum Loads



## RocknRollHunter (Feb 27, 2009)

I've been loading .410 shells for a couple years now and found out that the loads u get out of the book are slow and don't kill like i want them to. So I come up with my own loads. I've been loading 3''inch Fiochi hulls with 18.6 grs. of LIL'GUN, with 9/16 oz. of lead shot and AA HS red wad and winchester primer. These loads r very deadly but i don't think there safe. What do u think?
:sniper: :evil:


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## REDGUN (Jun 13, 2009)

The 410, because of its very small diameter, is the easiest shotshell to "overpressure". If this is not a published load, I wouldn't recomend its use.

If you need more killing power, get a bigger gun.


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## darkgael (Feb 10, 2006)

> These loads r very deadly but i don't think there safe. What do u think?


I agree. They are not safe. Normal 3" .410 5/8 oz hunting loads run velocity-wise at about 1200 fps at pressures in the 9900 to 11,000 psi area
"Slow"? Normal 12ga 1 1/4 oz hunting loads run in very similar territory, top pressures around 11K psi., velocity about 1200-1300 fps. I hunt grouse with target loads; kills them dead.
The point being that your pellets' energy is already on a par with what the larger gauge will do and, with enough pellets on the game, will kill just as effectively as a 12 ga. 
You don't need more power. The important words are "with enough pellets on the game". At any given distance, you have less than 1/2 the pellets in your .410 pattern. You need to shoot closer (or straighter) or go to a larger gauge. 
Pete


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## RocknRollHunter (Feb 27, 2009)

Speed is wat kills. Yes pattern is important to, but my .410 patterns well with any load. It just seems like i wound more birds over 35 yards than i kill. I dont need a bigger gun, it's easy to kill things with a 12 guage, a .410 takes a pro shooter to kill things over 40 yards consistantly. I shoot staight, ive won state skeet and state trap shoots and am the highest ranking youth shooter in the upper midwest.
When i shoot slow shells i just don't kill things as dead as they should be, these faster loads perform amazingly well and pattern even better.


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## darkgael (Feb 10, 2006)

Rock: When I wrote "shoot straighter" I didn't mean to imply that you didn't shoot straight - just that, as you wrote, it is an expert's gun and requires that the shooter keep the pattern centered. 
I'm happy that you have such experience with the .410. Here's the "but".....but your experience with the .410, despite your familiarity with it, shows a couple of things: one is that there's a world of difference between breaking clays and killing animals. You can break a clay pigeon with one pellet; you will only rarely kill a game animal with one pellet. 
The second is that the distances to which you refer - 35 and 40 yards - are challenging hunting distances for a 12 gauge load. Forty yards is awfully far. Even with a FC, one can expect the pattern to be 40 inches wide - that's a pretty thin spread for 9/16ths oz of shot. (I am curious, though; you have obviously patterned your gun at 40 yards - or so it seems. What were your patterns like? # of pellets in the circle. I ask because my FC .410 will not give satisfactory patterns at that distance - they are very thin - holes way bigger than a grouse or a clay pigeon.)


> a .410 takes a pro shooter to kill things over 40 yards consistantly.


 It takes a LUCKY pro shooter. 
The fact that you need extra energy in your pellets is an indicator that not many are reaching what you are shooting at, wounding instead of killing. I don't know what size shot you hunt with. 9/16ths oz of #7.5 has less than 200 pellets in the load, #6 less than 130.

Aside from all that, the thing is that your "magnum load" might be safe pressure-wise. But you don't know that and every time that you pull the trigger on one, you are taking a chance. There are ways to determine the pressure of a load - Oehler makes equipment using strain gauges. It'd be nice to know, wouldn't it?
Pete


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## NDTerminator (Aug 20, 2003)

I have to ask why try to make a .410 something it isn't, particularly if there is even a remote safety question?...


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