I have been thinking about doing a little reloading for ducks and wondered how many of ya'll do it.

I have 1 negative and that is I am not set up to load 3" shells and I normally use those to hunt with so I will be limited to 2 3/4. So I got to thinking of using bismuth but can't find it in bulk anywhere.

Any ideas or just keep shooting factory?

Just buy the MEC Steelmaster...

i dont know anything about it but am interested to see what people know about this. You could reload hot lead recipes in steel hulls. just sayin :-)

TDK....I have a sizemaster that could be converted to 3" steel but I am not going to do it to just load I will only do it if I can get some bismuth or something like that.

Mag...you still have to pass the magnet test if johnny law comes around

yep, they don't care what's written on the hull

You could do duplex loads though.

duplex loads would work save u some money on bismuth

Theres a reason duplex loads died off years ago...



High rolla!

Im on the verge of jumping on a single stage for reloading target loads, just havent pulled the trigger yet...

I used to reload Bismuth. Great way of tuning in a waterfowl gun.

Judd,

As far as the magnet test Bismuth will not pass unless something has changed in the past 5 years.


P.S.

I have a Mec 600 Jr for sale if anyone is interested.

http://www.midwayusa.com/viewProduct/?productNumber=836236

How mucha and what comes with it?

Never touched the stuff so just assumed it would pass the test. How do you prove to a game warden you aren't using lead?

I have also heard about guys using tin but haven't read anything about patterns and kills?

There used to be a company that sold Bismuth in #4 pellet size located in the Bryan college station area, They sold it as an easy way to "transport" bismuth metal because they said bismuth shot is a trade mark or patent....thats what they said! I dont know if its true.

me and a buddy were gonna buy a bag of it and use his lee loader to do 3" shells in #4 bismuth but we couldnt get them to return our calls...voice mail said they were retooling and would have to shut down.

even reloading it was gonna come out to over $1 per round but I still think it would be worth it.

I think they have stopped checking hardcore, at least if you are using factory loads. Most of the new non tox loads are not magnetic. I haven't seen how they test. I'm sure they could confiscate a shell and take it back for testing.

I've always wanted to shoot my own reloads, just never got around to it. There are some awesome recipes out there.

Oh...forgot to mention I have seen game wardens cut open a shell before, the looked it over after coming out of the gun and said it didnt look right.

It was a reload and the guy was using steel reloads his dad loaded, like stated before I dont know how they would check with all the nontox out there but if they are in cases that say STEEL and the magnet test fails....OOOOPS!!!

Why not just do it right with steel or nontox and be done with it

I had to cut a Bismuth reload and a factory Steel shot in front of a game warden and show the differences. (I had known the game warden for about 10 years at the time) Steel was harden and would show very little damage when hit with a hammer on a hard surface while Bismuth would split into. I had read somewhere that now they have an imprinted logo on the shot itself. Not sure about the validity because I haven't purchased any in about 6 years.

http://www.texashuntingforum.com/forum/u...bui#Post1507834

Will give you my bismuth recipes. There is some PSB. (Bismuth buffer)

It you are making 2 3/4" loads...buy the manual "Lighting Steel". they have some awesome loads in that manual. I've killed plenty of ducks with those loads and even shot a double on some snow geese one time.

Judd, 2 3/4" steel reloads will do just fine for ducks. I have been using loads out of the above manual and love them. They are much, much slower to reload than lead shell though.

PM Barneywho and ask him what he thinks about these shells.

No need to PM. I shoot 2 3/4" 1oz 3's at 1600fps. They will plain stomp a mud hole in a duck's arse.

I was also in KS last year when we had some greaters come into the field we weren't expecting set up for ducks. I didn't have any other shells in my bag to switch over. I killed my Canada limit easily up to 40 yards head shooting these guys. These geese were 10-12 pounders. Not saying I'd specifically use these shells to hunt geese, but giving you an idea of their killing power. They are more than enough for ducks. I want to say we were getting around 85-90% of the payload in a 30" circle at 40 yards with an SBE and Briley LM choke. I’d have to go back and look at the patterns as I’m not 100% sure. I might be confusing it with the TSS patterns.

If you want something that throws unbelievable patterns and will kill further than you can consistently hit with it, look into TSS!

Alright...ya'll got my attention now.

TSS is some amazing stuff but at an insane price. Just not a good value at all. If you can kill up to 40 to 45 yards with steel to me that's all you need. Shots beyond those ranges are likely going to be misses a lot of the time anyway. But if you really want that firepower nothing can compare to TSS..it makes Hevishot look like steel.

I am reloading TSS for about the same price as Factory HeviShot loads.

I guess my point is it's too costly (and time consuming) to rationalize the use of TSS. The real world results are not going to increase my bag by a significant enough amount of birds more to justify it for me.

A great stat would be$ spend on ammo/bird. Some birds shot with steel will need follow up shots where you would not have that with TSS or Hevi Shot for that matter...however the people that tout this always overstate it in my opinion because no matter what loads you are shooting there are always going to be cripples and it has nothing to do with the load but with the shooting. If you put the pattern on the bird you got a dead bird no matter what you are shooting...same goes if you hit the bird with the fringe of the pattern you will have a cripple no matter what.

I think those that use any type of HD loads are going to tempted take longer shots which would result in more misses....so that could actually increase your shells/bird $ spent on shells/bird. On the other side of the coin one could also say that because the shells are so expensive they would be more selective. It's all case by case.

In the end most of this would have more to do with the shooter than anything so all stats would have to be based on the shooter and you could never have results that were significant because you could have a great/disciplined shooter that shows one set of results and have another type of shooter show different results.

In the end if I were to start out reloading I'd start with steel and work you way up. I would never just recommend to a new reloader to start with TSS or Hevi shot...there is a learning curve and some matterials can be wasted. I'd rather waste cheap materials.

GOLDSTEIN

Judd, I'm interested too. Maybe we could split some of the costs and load up some hot shells.