Should You Use Target Shotshells for Hunting?

There’s no question that pre-season shotgun practice at your local trap, skeet, or sporting clays range will help you improve your shooting and bag more birds with fewer shots while hunting. But there’s one question that confounds many hunters—do I need to use the same shotshells for clay target sports that I will use during the hunting season?

On the surface this seems like a very simple question. Of course you should use the same loads for off-season practice that you use in the field later in the fall. Don’t bowhunters try to approximate their hunting setup when shooting 3-D targets during the summer? Aren’t rifle shooters encouraged to zero their gun with the same bullet that they’ll use while hunting big game? If you’re going to spend time honing your skills with a specific tool shouldn’t it be the same tool that you take into the field during the hunting season?

The Case for Using Target Loads in the Field

To provide an in-depth answer regarding the use of target shotshells on game I turned to Federal Premium shotshell product manager Dan Compton. Compton and his team have designed some of the top target and field loads in recent memory such as High Over All, Prairie Storm Bismuth Blend, and Ultra Steel, and he says that your favorite target load can serve double duty as a field load. Provided, of course, you match the payload to the game.

“For small birds like quail and dove target loads work just fine,” Compton says. “When I was in college we had a MEC loader and we loaded shells with as many #9 pellets as we could for grouse hunting. The cover was so thick we needed as many pellets as possible.”

Most clay target shotshells are loaded with #7.5, #8, or #9 pellets, all of which are perfect for breaking targets and equally adept at taking down small birds. With a 12-gauge target load you can expect to fire a 1 1/8-ounce payload of pellets at a velocity between 1,140 and 1,300 fps. That’s not a very fast or particularly heavy load, but that can be a benefit. If you’re trying to shoot a limit of doves, you might fire a couple boxes of shells. Target shotshells with modest velocities are mild enough that shooting a few boxes of shells won’t leave your head ringing and your shoulder aching.

Target shotshells are oftentimes cheap, too. In most instances you can buy a box of very good target shotshell loads for $15 to $18 per 25 and can certainly keep costs below $1 a shot. Compare that with premium copper-plated lead, bismuth, or blended TSS loads and the cost jumps above $1 a shot. Perhaps that’s manageable if you’re hiking Hell’s Canyon in search of Huns and chukars and hope to fire two or three shells a day, but when you’re going through boxes of ammo the price of premium shotshells adds up.

When Not To Use Traditional Target Loads

Compton assured me that it makes perfect sense to hunt with your favorite target load, especially if it’s a load that performs consistently in your gun. However, when the size of the bird, the shot range, or both require more energy and larger pellets, you probably won’t be satisfied with standard target loads.

“#7.5s, #8s, and #9s may work on preserve pheasants, but for wild birds you’ll likely do better with larger pellets,” says Compton. Pheasants are tough, fast-flying, and by the end of the season they are very wary of hunters and may jump from cover before you can approach closely. Under those circumstances I agree with Compton that larger pellets make sense. Of course, this is all density dependent, so TSS ammunition firing #8 or #9 pellets may very well reach out and drop a mature rooster at extended ranges, but the cost of hunting pheasants wit TSS is higher than many hunters are willing to pay, and target shooting with a TSS would be extraordinarily costly.

Most hunters who pursue hard-flying wild birds at extended ranges stick to something less expensive but with ample power to drop birds at distance. This is the realm of copper-plated #4s, #5s and #6s, although bismuth, tungsten, and even steel shot (or blended loads) offer non-toxic alternatives. Steel shot is the cheapest, so if regulations require lead-free ammo, that’s the least expensive option for the range and the field. However, steel is less dense than lead, bismuth, or tungsten.

If velocity and pellet diameter are the same steel shot doesn’t hit with as much energy as bismuth or tungsten pellets because of steel’s lower density, so many upland loads are blends of inexpensive steel and denser bismuth or tungsten. If you’re using non-toxic shotshells you have more options, but if you’re looking for a low-cost load for high-volume shooting then steel is the best answer. Steel loads will work on doves, quail, and perhaps preserve pheasants but you’ll find it much harder to anchor big, hard-flying wild birds.

Answers About Antimony

Lead is a very soft metal, so to harden it some companies like Federal include antimony in their lead shot. Antimony is a metalloid, and the more antimony is added to the lead the harder it becomes.

The advantage of hardening with antimony is that pellets do not deform in flight. According to Compton, higher-end competition loads typically have more antimony. Whereas a standard target/field load may have pellets that are 2% antimony, a dedicated handicap load for trap might have a higher antimony percentage such as 4% or 6%.

What’s all this mean for hunters? Compton says that depends upon who you ask.

While it’s generally accepted that high antimony is good for target ammo. Failing to break even one target of 100 in a major clays competition might mean the difference between earning a spot on the podium and going home empty-handed, so hard pellets make sense. But Compton says that while some shooters want loads with high antimony for dense patterns and better penetration, he told me that some dedicated bird hunters prefer lower antimony lead and feel it’s more lethal.

Bringing It All Together

Should you use your target shotshells for upland hunting? Yes, provided it’s suitable to hunt the birds you’re chasing with loads of #7.5, #8s, or #9s. Can you use copper-plated #6 lead pellets? Sure, so long as the range allows it (many don’t, FYI) and you can afford the increase in cost and recoil. The best answer is probably to stick with target loads for small upland species like dove and quail and transition to magnum loads with larger pellets when tackling tough birds like wild pheasants, prairie chickens, and chukars.

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