Super Loads For Varmint Shotguns — Part II L.P. Brezny
eral Cartridge, and the product was a new shotshell load with the engineering label attached that went by the name “Black C.” When the box was opened the name was clear — this new load was dubbed “Black Cloud.” The new shot came together this
With shooter and shotgun all tricked out in camoufl age, the new shotshell loads the author describes in text are just the ticket for coyotes and crows.
Part I, be advised that the development outfi t marketing the AA12 is addressing Dead Coyote-type loads as a fi rst line general purpose land war entry system for urban combat situations. I have watched segments of video covering live fi re testing of this new gun system with 20 caliber Dead Coyote shot, and you can be sure stuff comes apart with this high density shot type. BLACK CLOUD BY FEDERAL CARTRIDGE A couple of years back Federal
I
f you remember the AA12 cov- ered at the onset of this review in
started making their advanced tungsten pellets with a new system that left a ring or band on the fi nished product. When testing on warm targets I noticed that these small rings tended to add damage to a wound channel and produced a bit more lethal and effective shotshell in the newer shot type. I reviewed the loads at the time, wrote about the banded pellets, but, as such things go, the project was completed and then nothing more was done with it. That was until the UPS truck dropped off a box at my home in the Black Hills. The box was from Fed-
way. Federal designed the belt into steel shot and called it “FS,” or “Flitestop- per.” Now, add the use of the special advanced turkey wad also developed about the time the belted shot came out, and you have a very new shotshell that adds up to the following. The Flitecontrol wad is what I consider the heart of the new load design. That is because back as far as three years ago I was dusting off gobblers at 60 yards with this wad system in a Federal Heavyweight gobbler killing shotshell load in 12 gauge. Even back at that time I realized that things were changing in the smoothbore ballistics world. Here I had a shotgun load in 12 gauge that was doing the work of some old time rifl e shooters carrying 40-grain soft nose .22 Hornets for turkeys in the 1950s. The wad itself is a very different
unit from those normally used with waterfowl loads in that it uses a base opening fl ap breaking system, and as for front opening petals it just stays together as a single tube. In other words, it is a fi ne shot sabot of sorts, much like those used with shotgun slug systems today. Second, the payload is a 60 percent by 40 percent mix of standard steel and FS steel (banded). That means you’re getting some FS for deeper cutting pen- etration, and fi lling in the pattern with normal round ball steel shot. When the wad is fi red, those rear
end petals, or fl aps, open enough to start to slow the wad. At the same time side cutaway fl aps located about halfway down the one-piece solid plastic tube start to open a bit, and help in stabiliz- ing the whole payload delivery system. Because this reaction time is slow-
The author here patterns the new Black Cloud shotshell loads from Federal Cartridge.
Page 38 July — September 2011
er than what is found with conventional wads, the whole 550-grain plus payload works for a short time as a single unit of energy. Think of it as a single, very heavy slug moving along for a time
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