0 too much for dogs? Dog Shooting Question

[GrumpyOldMan]

Quote:
This is what I was worried about, the BB shot is so numerous that it's pretty much guaranteed to hit a vital organ. With only 9 pellets in the 0 buckshot I didn't want to have say, 3 pellets hit the hind quarters and leave the animal injured rather than dead. I guess I'll need to practice a bit.

I'm pretty sure your shotgun is full choke. Should say on the barrel.

There's nothing on the barrel that mentions choke, but there certainly isn't an aftermarket choke in it and the barrel appears dead straight at the end, inside and out, although that's not a very scientific measure.​

See if a US Dime will fit in the muzzle end of the barrel. If it won’t go in its either full choke or “bore”. Bore means there has not been any honing / relief ground in the end of the barrel. Boor and full choke both hold the tightest patter. If the dime fits in it has either modified, pigeon, or open choke. In the order I have written the chokes you will get progressively wider spread of the shot at the same distance. I'm guessing your barrel is bore / no choke. Hope this helps.

 

[Oven Ready]

I decided to go with the 0 buckshot.
I tried a few practice shots at cardboard and clearly the spread at 8 metres is much less than the BB shot is but not so tight that it would be a miss and I can see that only a few pellets making contact would be enough given the size of them.

To answer a couple of questions.

The internal diameter of the end of the barrel is 18.5mm, which is bigger than a US dime but not by much.

The 60's were a long time ago and now here, like pretty much every other country these days, has it's troubles with drugs particularly synthetic ones that you can brew up in a spare room. This has brought about a huge increase in guns which are confiscated by the police and then destroyed by the government ( ahem...). As more criminals arm themselves, so the law abiding citizens arm themselves. Getting a license to have a gun is considerably more difficult than obtaining the gun itself so the gun ownership statistics put us low down in the list while my experience suggests that most households outside of cities and large towns possess at least one weapon, usually a hand gun - 9mm semi-automatic or .38 revolver.
The maximum legal rifle caliber is a .22, however as with many things here laws are not strictly enforced hence the reason it is possible to by a ex-army/police semi-automatic M16, an old one to be fair. Fully automatic weapons are also illegal. There are plans for an Amnesty some time next year to allow people to hand in their weapons without fear of prosecution and also plans to restrict gun licensing even further to the point of banning gun ownership in 'tourist' areas. We live on a farm so we're OK.

Gun ownership, licensed or not, is definitely on the increase here. In the past three years there are three private shooting ranges opened up within 20 Kms of us, plus the Army base shooting range. Although I'm originally from the UK where only psychopaths, thieves, bank robbers and drug dealers have guns, I've lived in other countries with more relaxed gun ownership laws and I still think that armed citizens are way safer than unarmed ones.

Thanks again to everyone that responded and I'm sure the moderators will all be pleased we managed it without any troubles.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

Oven, you sound like my kind of guy, even if you were originally from the UK.

If you ever get back to the US and come down New Orleans way look me up and we’ll make a range trip. I’ll open up my “arsenal” and we’ll have some fun. I was going to the range tomorrow to play with the AR, 30-06 and the .17 HMR but we have a tropical depression in the Gulf of Mexico so the weather sucks. Good hunting.

 

[Mattemma]

I think feral dogs should be humanely killed. Just watched animal planet show where feral dogs killed an elderly couple a few hundred yards from their home.

 

[Oven Ready]

I want do it as humanely as I can, that's why I asked the question about the particular shot size.

I don't shoot them to make them suffer or exact revenge, I shoot them because I have little other option and I do it in as humane a way as I possibly can. I hope they don't even hear the bang from the gun before they are dead.

We might be straying into a discussion not related to the precise topic and we've all been advised to stay right on topic with this one which we have done so far.

I think it would be wise to not go any further with this particular topic.
I may ask the moderators to close the topic to prevent anything getting wayward.

 

[gumpsgirl]

*Closed by request of the OP.*