i farted around with them for an afternoon once. heres part of a post i made a few years ago...
ive seen posts about these before here, so i thought Id take some pictures and show how I killed an hour this afternoon.
Bird shot, barn shot, rat shot, ive seen these for sale locally for years, but never had 7 bucks to waste on these when I own several perfectly capable shotguns between .410 and 12 gauge. The other day I had 7$ to waste and decided to try a box since ive never played with .22 birdshot. I had some extra time and the range today, so i grabbed it on my way out the door to see how it does.
Its federal brand, 50 to a box as usual. Its sealed with star crimp and contains 25 grains of #12 lead shot. I used a H&R 9 shot .22 revolver and an old cooey 39 to shoot em.
left to right, fired shell, unfired shell, standard .22lr 40grain
the cooey 75 and h&r revolver i fired the shot with
pics of patterns
I shot some butcher paper, and at only 5 yards, the rifle shot in about an 8'' circle, at 10 yards, it open up to over 12''. The handgun at 5 yards was 6 or 7'', and about 10'' at 10 yards. I was really surprised at the amount of spread.
another surprise was how small a #12 pellet actually is. the holes in the paper from the shot are smaller than the holes from the thumb tacks holding the paper up.
the targets were tacked up to a peice of 1/4'' plywood and alot of times it didnt even pentrate the paper and just bouced off leaving a slight indent and marked by the lead. ive got about 35 left, so maybe next time I have an afternoon to waste ill see how much penetration I can get on layers of cardboard.