Low Recoil Shotgun Ammo: Better Shooting, Fewer Bad Habits

With Aguila’s short, cute, low-noise, low-recoil Minishells becoming a surprise hit, a lot of people are discovering that shooting is more fun when you don’t get kicked. People who shoot Minishells don’t come home from the range with a sore neck, a headache, a bruised cheek or a raw shoulder. As much fun as they are, Minishells have their drawbacks.

They won't cycle in many pumps nor any semiautomatics. Their 5/8 ounce payload limits their effective range. Federal's new Shorty Shotshells contain almost an ounce of shot so they have more reach, but they, too, won't function in many pumps and semiautos.

Fortunately, there are several 2-3/4-inch low-recoil target loads on the market that will work in all pumps and cycle in many semiautos. However, beware you may have to look a little harder and pay a little more than you’re used to if you usually buy your target loads at Big Box stores and/or in 100 round packs.

Typically, those contain 1-1/8 oz. of shot that move at 1200 fps and deliver a hefty kick about like a .30-06 rifle round.

Downsized loads truly can be an instance where less is more. Here’s why it’s worth the extra trouble and expense to find them:

In the field, or in a home defense situation, you won’t even feel a few shots from a hard-kicking load. Practice is different.

There are only so many shots you can take in practice before you lose focus. The harder you get kicked, the sooner you reach the point of mental and physical burnout.

Your body isn’t stupid. It doesn’t like getting hurt, and it will try to protect you from the source of pain. That’s why some people pull their heads away from the stock and snatch the gun off their shoulder when they pull the trigger.

In extreme cases some shut both eyes or take a step back. Once you build those bad habits, they are hard to unlearn. I don’t care how big and strong you are, this could happen to you, too.

It takes a lot of shooting to do damage to yourself beyond bruises and a little swelling, but it’s possible to do permanent damage to yourself. If get so deeply hooked on shotgun shooting to fire many thousands of rounds a year, you risk bursitis and orthopedic problems from a steady diet of heavy loads as you age.

If keep a shotgun for home defense and you have to use it, being able to easily and comfortably handle the recoil under stress can become extremely important, especially if you have to fire more than one shot on target.

Switching to low-recoil loads in you home defense shotgun doesn’t really mean you’re sacrificing necessary power. A 12-gauge 2-3/4 hunting shell loaded with 00 Buck is designed to kill a deer at 50 yards or so—you don’t need all that power when you’re talking about in-home distances to be reliably effective.

Recoil and kick are almost, but not quite, the same thing. Recoil is a function of ejecta (shot payload plus powder plus wad) weight and muzzle velocity divided by gun weight. “Kick” is more subjective.

For instance, a soft recoil pad doesn’t change how much a gun recoils, but its padding effect makes the gun kick you less.

The same is true with gas semiuatomatics, which generate the same recoil as any other gun of the same weight, but because they spread recoil out over a longer duration as recoil energy is stored and released in moving parts of the gun, they kick noticeably less. Gun fit and balance play a part in how much a gun kicks as well.

Convinced that you should lighten up? I hope so.

Here are some full-size low-recoil shells to try. All of them will break clay targets at reasonable ranges. I have listed each load's recoil in foot/pounds. By comparison, 1 1/8 ounce, 1200 fps ammunition generates 21.6 ft/lbs of recoil in a 7 ½ pound gun, as determined by a recoil calculator Minishells, the softest kicking ammo around, generate just 8.7 ft/lbs of recoil. The loads listed here all lie in between those two extremes, recoil-wise.

Low recoil ammunition used to be harder to find, so I started reloading to make my own. Shotshell reloading isn’t difficult.

A single-stage reloader like a MEC 600 Jr Mark V costs about $240 and loads a box of shells in 12-15 minutes.

If you don’t want to invest that much at the start, you can spend less than $100 on a perfectly serviceable LEE LOAD-ALL II, but if you decide to reload a higher volume of shells, you’ll have to upgrade eventually.

You can find lots of load recipes published by powder manufacturers like Hodgdon and Alliant for 7/8 and even ¾ ounce 12 gauge loads and you can find ¾ ounce 20 gauge recipes, too.

Reloaders who focus on light loads save more than those who stick with standard 1 1/8 ounce loads, because shot is the biggest expense of making your own ammunition so if you load your own low-recoil stuff, both your shoulder and your pocketbook will thank you.