Not really.Originally Posted by SwampDweller
Our goal is to immediately stop the threatening actions of the other guy. As in he's doing something that will kill us or someone we care about in the next couple of seconds and we need to guarantee he will not be capable of continuing that action as quickly as possible.
A key aspect to understand, here, is that what we are doing does not depend on his will. We are going to render him physically unable to continue trying to maim or kill us. If he dies of sepsis three weeks after he's dealt us a traumatic brain injury, our goal of self defense has not been achieved.
For that specific purpose, there's not going to be any appreciable difference in the performance of 8 pellets vs. 9 pellets vs. 12 pellets, etc.
Buckshot is effective because of a near simultaneous impact of multiple projectiles. When the pellets are close enough together to be hitting more or less the same relatively local pieces of tissue, it creates a synergistic effect. Elastic tissue becomes inelastic. Inelastic tissues are pulverized. Bones break more readily. Eventually the pellets spread out in tissue enough that the synergistic effect is lost...at which point the pellets acting individually punch holes in whatever tissues they hit.
On a shot delivered to the right spot in the chest at home defense distances, a pattern no bigger than your fist (often smaller) punches through the sternum and carries some of those bone fragments as the full pattern starts to carry through to the top chambers of the heart and the junction of the aorta. This is where that synergistic effect mentioned above is going to be at its strongest. From there the pellets will continue to spread and at least a few of them will likely end up lodging in the spine or into large nerve bundles that come off of the spine.
This will likely prove sufficiently distracting to the other party that the attack will cease regardless of whether or not the payload was 8 pellets or 9 pellets or 15 pellets.
Where you do see a difference between 8 and 9 pellet is in the size of the pattern. Most shotguns ("most" because there are always exceptions to the rule) will shoot a "flyer" with 9 pellet buckshot that isn't grouping with the rest of the pattern. With good buckshot that 9th pellet flyer is still sufficiently close that it isn't a concern for accountability at the distances we're most likely using a shotgun. Even so, I've seen some guns where that 9th pellet becomes a real concern, especially if they are using suboptimal sighting systems like beads.
A pellet in a guy's fat roll doesn't do anything to help guarantee he stops what he's doing. But it can make it more difficult to keep all our pellets on the only person that has earned a bullet in an environment heavily populated by people we don't want to shoot.
So while people think more pellets = more damage = better, in reality 8 pellet buckshot is already proving to be incredibly effective and more is just...more. Not better. Especially if it opens up the pattern enough where you lose the ability to keep all the pellets on dude who earned the shot.
For most guns inside 15 yards the difference in pattern size between an 8 and 9 pellet flite-control wad (either from Hornady or Federal) will be so minimal as to not be a concern. But you should test both in your gun and see which one it shoots better and make the determination based on the overall size and concentration of the pattern. Whichever one it shoots better, stick with that one.
If, God forbid, you have to actually use it to defend yourself or your family I promise that the dude forcing you to resort to lethal force won't know the difference between 8 pellets or 9 passing through his aortic arch and into his spine.
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