Mini Shotgun Shell - Over the past few years, 1 3/4" mini shotgun shells have gone from a quirky novelty to an ammunition option that firearms and cartridge manufacturers seem to be taking seriously. Mini shells offer reduced recoil and increased ammo capacity—ideal features for many rifle users.
But are these pint-sized 12-gauge loads as effective as standard 2 3/4″ shells? Or is there some compromise?
Mini Shotgun Shell
We measured and tested four different mini projectiles to find out their muzzle velocity, how they draw distances for home defense, and their performance in ballistic gelatin.
Mini Clip 12 Gauge Minishell Adapter Mossberg 500 590
Hello everyone, I'm from Chris Baker and today I'm going to talk about miniguns and whether they are viable for self defense. Standard 12 shotgun shells are 2 ¾ inches long. The mini shells are 1 ¾ inches. They started out as something of a novelty a few years ago, but many shooters saw the potential for self-defense applications and the ammo market responded accordingly. Mini-cartridge and cased cartridges allow you to put more rounds in your tube-fed rifle, and most also have reduced recoil even compared to the lighter 2 ¾-inch cartridges.
Minishells were originally advertised for use only in hunting rifles, as they generally do not feed reliably in pumps, and certainly not in semi-autos. Some pump actions handle them better than others. They usually do well if you take the action slowly and deliberately and keep the gun perfectly level. The problem is that there is enough room inside the action for a mini-shell or spent mini-case to rattle around and cause stoppage. You may run into some odd double feeds and other issues that rarely occur with 2 ¾ inch shells.
But a few years ago a company called OpSol started making this cheap little adapter. You simply slide it directly into the loading port of a Mossberg 500 or 590 rifle. It takes up that extra space that minishells don't need and dramatically improves reliability. The only real downside is that if you want to use 2 ¾ inch or larger shells, you have to remove the adapter.
Then last year Mossberg released the 590S. This is a standard Mossberg 590 12 gauge, except for some minor changes to the action to make it compatible with minishells. Unlike the Opsol adapter, the 590S can feed 2 ¾-inch or 3-inch mini-shells or projectiles without making any modifications to the gun. This version of the 590S has a plain sight and an 18-inch barrel. Mossberg says the six-shot tube will hold nine minishells, but we actually have 10 that fit in there. They also make a 20-inch version with choke tubes and phantom sights - which holds 13 minishells. There is also an 8+1 capacity Shockwave 590S with mini shells.
Shotgun Mini Shells
So now we have several options for building a solid home defense rifle that can also reliably feed mini-projectiles. That means we'll probably have to look at the mini shells themselves to see if they're up to the task.
We have four options to consider. The first is a machine gun minicharge from Aguila. There are seven #4 pellets and four #1 pellets. The other three loads are from the feds - they call them "Shorty Shells". We have a 15-shot #4 shot, a one-ounce slug, and a #00 six-shot shot. This #00 load uses Federal's Force X2 pellet, which is designed to split in half on impact.
For each of these charges, we measured the velocity, shaped them, and placed them in ballistic gelatin. Our test gun was a Mossberg 590S. We also got some speed measurements with the Shockwave, but they were almost identical to what we got with the 18-inch 590S. So there shouldn't be a significant difference in ballistic performance.
First, let's look at the model with the three ball loads. Spreading the ball too much is a major problem for the home defense. Opinions differ on how much spread is too much. Personally, I have kids and pets in my house and neighbors nearby, so I like to play it safe—a fist-sized design or smaller is what I find ideal. At my maximum shooting distance at home, a hand's width would probably be fine. For most houses, that maximum range will be somewhere between 5 and 15 yards, so we configure those loads at 5, 10, and 15. We shot two rounds at each distance and measured the pattern at its widest point.
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At 10 yards, the Aguila and Force X2 opened to 10 and 9 inches. Federal #4 still looks good at 10 yards.
Moving on to 15, all three give us a fairly broad pattern. Keep in mind that each rifle barrel model is slightly different. But a 12 to 15 inch spread at 15 yards is very wide by any standard.
So before we even get to velocity and ultimate ballistics, I wasn't impressed with the performance of these mini-fired projectiles. These models may be good depending on your application - especially #4 Federal. But there is clearly room for improvement.
Now let's move on to the velocity, felt recoil and gelatin tests. We measured muzzle velocity with a chronograph, averaging the five shots. Our ballistics test is a Clear Ballistics synthetic gel placed at 10 feet with a four-layer barrier of FBI-style heavy duty clothing.
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Aguila's bullet averaged 1,129 feet per second on our chronograph. This is comparable to a 2 ¾ inch low recoil load. But the combined mass of the pellets in the Aguila mini shell is about half that of a standard shell. This means that the felt recoil is significantly lighter.
That low recoil comes with a trade-off. The depth of gel penetration was between 8.5 and 13 inches. There is a definite difference in what the #4 pellets did compared to the #1 pellets in this load. We lost one of the #4s when it twisted and came off the top of the gel block. The other #4 pellets settled between 8.5 and 11.5 inches. This is not surprising for a #4 buck - it is often considered acceptable for self-defense. Pellets #1 went in a little deeper. It was right there at 11.5 to 13 inches. So overall it's not exactly impressive, but maybe not bad if you're worried about over-entering a high-hazard environment like an apartment building.
Federal #4 Mini-shell with 15 pellets at 1187 feet per second. By comparison, Federal's 2 ¾-inch #4 Personal Defense load has 34 pellets advertised at 1,100 feet per second. This load is pretty strong as far as recoil goes. But at only 44% of the mass, the mini-shell version is extremely easy to pick up.
In the gel, the penetration was between about 9.5 and almost 15 inches. Six of the 15 pellets landed deeper than 11.5 inches, the rest were quite shallow. As I said before, #4 is a bit of an anomaly. Depending on who you ask, this is either unacceptable for self-defense or barely acceptable. And that's when it's fully loaded with 30 or more pellets.
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Going back to our pattern, at 10 yards or less we have all 15 balls hitting roughly the same area at the same time. Che
We still have that trademark "one shot stop" effect that shotguns are known for. When the pattern is spread out over a larger range, each of these small #4 beads will be much less effective on their own.
Buckshot Federal Force X2 looked the most promising to me. You usually get 8 or 9 pellets with a standard #00 shell. Six pellets is still not bad if they penetrate enough. The velocity was 1195 feet per second. Very close to our other picks so far. And like the other two loads, the recoil was very soft.
In the gelatin, these beads did exactly what they were designed to do. They are divided in half and spread out. But that really limited their ability to penetrate. When the pellet's mass is halved, it doesn't have the momentum to go as far. We lost a piece from the top of the block. Some other fragments exceeded the 12-inch mark. But most of them stopped between 9 and 11 inches.
Fiocchi 12ga 1 7/8 Mini Hulls, Red (100/bag)
Most #00 loads travel 20 inches or more in gelatin. This is actually more penetration than we really need. But 9-11 inches is definitely on the shallow side for a defensive shot. I really wish Federal had just made this load with the standard #00 pellets. The Force X2 cargo is covered and cupped, which is a good start. They just need to load it with an undivided #00 or #1 cartridge. And if gun enthusiasts really want to get excited about mini projectiles, they could add a FliteControl stick.
Anyway, let's move on to the Federal Short Slug. It's a one-ounce slug that travels at 1,141 feet per second. It's exactly the same
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