Jerah Hutchins

Winchester 12-Gauge Defender Ammo

Jerah Hutchins
Duration:   3  mins

PDN viewers know Rob Pincus recommends the Winchester Defender line of ammunition for personal defense and training. In this video, Rob is joined by PDN Contributor Jerah Hutchins of Clearing the Chamber to demonstrate the importance of patterning a defensive shotgun to enhance training.

PATTERNING … NOT JUST FOR WATERFOWL

The round being patterned is the Winchester 12-ga Defender Ammunition (copper-plated buckshot, 2 ¾ inches, 1145 velocity, 9 pellets, 00 buck). Many people still use a shotgun for home defense, and it has law enforcement and game control applications as well. (Rob says “still” because his primary home-defense weapon is now an AR-type rifle, not a shotgun).

If you have a shotgun for home defense, you need to know what’s going to happen when you fire it … hence patterning. How large or small is that pattern going to be when you blast a home invader with it?

TWO ROUNDS, DIFFERENT DISTANCES

Jerah takes the first shot at about seven yards, which is a reasonable home-defense distance – think, across the open floor plan of a home, or down a stairwell. You may also need to fire through a window of your home to stop an intruder who’s in your yard or on your land shooting rifle rounds through your living-room windows. The entire group is about fist sized, confirming that you do need to aim a shotgun. Spray and pray is not a defensive plan.

Jerah and Rob move out to about 15 yards, no longer a home-defense distance but more a distance for law enforcement use. The Winchester 12-ga Defender round really shines at this distance. The group made by the nine pellets can only be covered by Rob’s wide open hand.

When doing shotgun training or practice with a round that’s new to you, be sure to pattern it so you’ll know what to expect if you have to fire it in self defense.

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If you followed my recommendations when it comes to personal offense ammunition for any period of time, you know that I'm a personal fan of the Winchester defender line and everything Winchester has to offer when it comes to training ammo, and defensive ammo. In the product showcase during the fall of 2021, Well, I was joined by Daryl Hutchins, to talk about, how important it is to pattern your defensive shotgun to enhance our training. We've got the Winchester defender round. This is a great option, if we're going to have a shotgun for home defense. Obviously, there's some law enforcement that still uses it, Game control officers.

There's a lot of different people that out there still relying on shotguns. And I say still, because I primarily switched over to AR platforms. A lot of people have switched over to rifles, Our law enforcers switched over to rifles. But, if you've got that shotgun in the house, and you're looking for a good 12 gauge round, you need to know what's gonna happen with it. Patterning isn't just for waterfowl and trap shooters.

You need to know how big, or how small that pattern is gonna be, as well when it comes to a defensive round. So, we've got two different distances here. Right here, we're kind of at a distance that I would say it's about seven yards. We're looking at across an open floor plan in a house. We're looking at down the stairwell.

We're looking at maybe out in your front yard, if someone's attacking you from outside and you've gotta go through a window, or something and get them to stop shooting those rifle rounds into your house. situations where you're not in the extreme close quarters. Obviously, we know that this 12 gauge load is gonna be be very damaging. We don't need to shoot into the gel, but we need to know how big that pattern is gonna be. So Daryl's just gonna go ahead and aim at the center of that clean white piece of paper.

All right. If you'll clear that. And we'll go down here and take a look. So this is a Remington 870 very typical kind of home defense shotgun. This one is set up.

It's actually Mike Anderson's shotgun. He brought it up here today. And if you're gonna step to this side over, make sure the camera can see this. You can see this is well less than the wide open hand we talk about. Now, you just were playing with the 3D targets.

When we shoot at the true dimensional targets, we talk about group size being defined by your target size. The high center chest, you can think of it as a wide open hand. The entire group is actually pretty much a fist, right? How do you think this weighs in against what the newbie has as the idea of what a shotgun's gonna do? Well, first thing is, point of aim versus point of impact.

Right? So with your handguns, when you side in, you're hitting where you're aiming, unless of course there's anticipation but with shotguns, it's a little bit different. So yeah, so we're not exact putting everything into a pinpoint, but it's obviously well controlled. We're not thinking about bystanders. We're not worried about, you're not gonna be able to just point the shotgun around the corner, down the hall fire the shot and hit the guy.

You still have to aim. Your point of aim and your point of impact are still related. Just because it's a shotgun doesn't mean it's spray and pray, and it will work. If you don't aim these things, it's not gonna to work. Now we're in a distance that is probably well beyond a typical home defense distance.

But if there is a shotgun being used, we know we have a lot of law enforcement people, military people. If you're in an environment where you have a shotgun and you're outside, this is where the Winchester defender pellet round is really going to shine because, obviously there, it's not the only round like this, but it's a round that I trust. And we're gonna take a look now. Same thing, same exercise, wide open piece of white paper. Daryl's gonna aim at the center of it.

Right? Same thing. Now, if you'll clear that, go back down and take a look. And once again, now this is double the distance. A little more than double the distance.

We went from seven to 15 and this wide open hand I'm able to completely cover that group.

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