cd2
Senior Refuge Member
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2023
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So I tinker with tss/steel duplexes for waterfowl quite a bit and have been shooting tss at waterfowl for going on 4 years now. I have developed duplexes for 410, 28ga, 20ga, and 12ga. Something I get tired of doing is loading multiple duplexes for different situations. Typically I load a 3/9 or 2/8 duplex for ducks and then a 1/7 duplex for big honkers. I have had great success, but had a thought the other day
What if I could load a steel/tss duplex that would kill every species of North American waterfowl without sacrificing any performance whatsoever? This would mean I would need sufficient pellet count to kill small ducks like teal and wood ducks while also having sufficient penetration to harvest geese at 50 yards. To get the pellet count you are going to have to use more tss than normal, but I can buy tss in bulk for pretty good prices. To get the penetration you are going to have to use a larger shot size than you typically need.
Something I have noticed with tss is that the prescribed sizes don't impress me much. Everyone raves over tss #9, and while I have killed a truck bed full of ducks with it, it doesn't floor me like tss should. Tss #8 is much better for ducks. Same goes for geese, I don't really like shooting them with tss #8, but tss #7 floors me.
With all that being said, I think a blend of #2 steel shot over #7 TSS will kill anything that flies. The challenge is getting the pellet count up
In 3" 12ga the largest payload I can load and still expect good velocity while being under the pressure ceiling is around 1-1/4oz. Roster's shotshell table tells us that for small ducks we need 135+ pellets in the 30" circle at 40 yards. It is no problem to expect a 70% pattern at 40 yards with a tss/steel duplex. This means the total load needs to have around 194 pellets
I would like to use as little TSS as possible. With a TSS #7 pellet count of 189/oz and a #2 steel shot pellet count of 125/oz, an even blend of 5/8oz of TSS #7 and 5/8oz of Steel #2 gives me 196 pellets with a total payload of 1-1/4oz.
This is a load I plan to send off for testing this week. Hoping for 1400fps+. It sure would be nice to not have to worry about loading different duplexes. Put shells in gun and kill, repeat. Think its doable?
What if I could load a steel/tss duplex that would kill every species of North American waterfowl without sacrificing any performance whatsoever? This would mean I would need sufficient pellet count to kill small ducks like teal and wood ducks while also having sufficient penetration to harvest geese at 50 yards. To get the pellet count you are going to have to use more tss than normal, but I can buy tss in bulk for pretty good prices. To get the penetration you are going to have to use a larger shot size than you typically need.
Something I have noticed with tss is that the prescribed sizes don't impress me much. Everyone raves over tss #9, and while I have killed a truck bed full of ducks with it, it doesn't floor me like tss should. Tss #8 is much better for ducks. Same goes for geese, I don't really like shooting them with tss #8, but tss #7 floors me.
With all that being said, I think a blend of #2 steel shot over #7 TSS will kill anything that flies. The challenge is getting the pellet count up
In 3" 12ga the largest payload I can load and still expect good velocity while being under the pressure ceiling is around 1-1/4oz. Roster's shotshell table tells us that for small ducks we need 135+ pellets in the 30" circle at 40 yards. It is no problem to expect a 70% pattern at 40 yards with a tss/steel duplex. This means the total load needs to have around 194 pellets
I would like to use as little TSS as possible. With a TSS #7 pellet count of 189/oz and a #2 steel shot pellet count of 125/oz, an even blend of 5/8oz of TSS #7 and 5/8oz of Steel #2 gives me 196 pellets with a total payload of 1-1/4oz.
This is a load I plan to send off for testing this week. Hoping for 1400fps+. It sure would be nice to not have to worry about loading different duplexes. Put shells in gun and kill, repeat. Think its doable?
