Winchester Razorback XT Buckshot

[Unobtanium]

I am curious what the thoughts on this are. I've never owned a shotgun that would do very well with Flite Control from Federal, and then there are people who complain about Federal's sloppy crimp. Hornady's 8-pellet/1600fps loading performed even worse in my Benelli's than did the Flite Control, sometimes completely missing a 12" target at 25 yards (the pattern was not "off", at 15 yards it was over 2 feet wide).

So, I did some looking and chanced upon Winchester's version. I bought some and plan on testing it later this week. It looks like very high quality stuff, and Winchester buckshot has always patterned VERY well from my Benelli M4s.

It is a full-power (1450fps) 8-pellet loading of copper-plated and buffered pellets that utilizes a 2-part rear-braking wad system similar/identical to what Winchester uses in their waterfowl shot ("Blindside", I believe) that is getting very good results in that application, as I understand.

Oddly, I have yet to find a single review of it online, or anything even written by a layperson like myself who just bought it and wanted to tell someone. Nada. So, I'm checking it out for myself. Has anyone else?




As the wad is taken from the shell:

After opening the "petals" by hand. They are not attached at the top, I simply bent them out so they can easily be visualized. Also shown is the bottom half of the 2-piece wad system which is between the shot-cup and the powder:

[jetfire]

I patterned some of this not too long ago for an article, it didn't perform we'll out of an 870 or Mossberg 930. Sloppier pattern than both Hornady and Military buck. Shotguns are all different though.

[Unobtanium]

I patterned some of this not too long ago for an article, it didn't perform we'll out of an 870 or Mossberg 930. Sloppier pattern than both Hornady and Military buck. Shotguns are all different though.

Thank-you! Yes, I have found Flite Control 9-pellet 00B to pattern very poorly past 25 yards from my Benelli M4 (Winchester Ranger 9-pellet full power patterns much better at those distances), while the Flite Control was throwing 12" patterns at nearly 50 yards from a friend's 590A1. It runs phenomenally in that shotgun. So I can certainly agree that shotguns have different personalities! I hope to add my results later this week.

What chokes were you using, and what distance did you test to? What kind of patterns did you get? This is how my M1014 did using Winchester Ranger 9-pellet Buck at 40 yards (5 shots):

[jetfire]

15 yards, an cylinder in the 930. The Remington has their "tactical extended Cylinder" which is...a thing.