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I can buy a box of 25 rounds of 8 birdshot for about the same price as a box of 5 rounds of 00 buckshot. The shell, primer and amount of powder is similar if not identical. Both shells have about an ounce of lead. So the raw materials are the same cost or very close. So why does a buckshot cost five times as much as birdshot?

Supply and demand or some such..,er, uh...excuse as that. Why are .410 bore shells twice the price of 12 ga?

Here is how this issue was explained to me:

Billions of rounds of 12- and 20-gauge #7.5 through 9 rounds are sold every year to skeet, trap, and sporting clays shooters and bird hunters, who often shoot several thousand rounds a year per shooter. (In this case, round means one shell, not one round of trap or skeet, which requires 25 shells.)

My wife and I have both exceeded 3,000 rounds a year, and we're duffers.

This high volume means that these rounds are cheaper to produce, like most consumer goods.

Much less buckshot is sold, because most hunters can take only a few animals a year, and there aren't all that many hunters any more.

People who use buckshot in self-defense shotguns do not shoot thousands of rounds a year, probably not even 100 or so.

Also, some buckshot rounds have to be loaded manually, rather than by automated machinery.

- Jim

Same rational as for shotgun slugs.

and the same reason that .25, .32 and .380 normally cost more than 9mm

seamusTX wrote:
People who use buckshot in self-defense shotguns do not shoot thousands of rounds a year, probably not even 100 or so.

- Jim

Well, in most cases. As for me, so far I've put a few hundred rounds though my HD shotgun in the last 9 months, with either slugs or buckshot. Because slugs are easier to find in bulk packs and cheaper, that's most of what I put through the gun. If I could reliably find quantities of decent practice buckshot (such as the Estate Cartridge #4 Buck that Cabela's is ALWAYS out of), I'd buy more of it.

You may do that for a while, then tell yourself that you've got the routine down pat and cut back to a few sessions per year.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that practical shotgun shooting is like riding a bicycle: once you make it routine and habitual, you do not need to practice much. There is a lot of muscle memory in shotgun shooting.

This is not true of handgun shooting. If you quit practicing for some months, you will likely be back to broad side of barn territory.

- Jim

seamusTX wrote:You may do that for a while, then tell yourself that you've got the routine down pat and cut back to a few sessions per year.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that practical shotgun shooting is like riding a bicycle: once you make it routine and habitual, you do not need to practice much. There is a lot of muscle memory in shotgun shooting.

This is not true of handgun shooting. If you quit practicing for some months, you will likely be back to broad side of barn territory.

- Jim

Perhaps you're right. I suppose only time will tell. For some reason, I get a real kick out of practical shotgunning. It's a lot of fun for me, much more so than silhouette/bullseye with handguns. While IDPA is fun, I find myself wishing there was an equivalent for shotgunning. Lots of people own shotguns and keep them for home defense. Organizing something or this nature might bring more folks into shooting activities and benefit the community as a whole.

Thanks for the replies. I'll have to keep looking for sales and stock up when it's cheaper.