The shotguns power as portrayed in most movies and video games is vastly different from the real world effects. MythBusters did a myth regarding this. In short, taking a shotgun shot to the center of your chest from a short distance away will result in your body simply dropping to the ground. Not flying back or anything of the sort. Just dropping to the ground as if your legs have suddenly given out.

In terms of range, again, what you see in video games couldn’t be further from the truth. Games would have you believe that unless you’re a few steps from your intended target, the spread of a shotgun would do little more than tickle the intended target. Shooting at targets 25-yards away with shot didn’t spread anywhere near what video games would leave you to expect. Granted, the spread was fairly large, but you could still easily see the focus. The impact was also deep enough to cause a lot of harm and bodily injury. I know hunters who have killed animals with shot from a shotgun at a range of about 30 yards.

But that brings us to the shotgun slug, which works wonderfully at distances of up to about 100 yards. So as long as the target is within roughly 100 yards and you’re using the correct shotgun shell, you can effectively hit and kill a target. But again, don’t expect a human to fly upon impact.

Can you hit a target further than 100 yards with a shotgun? Sure, I wouldn’t doubt it. But 100 yards is the longest range I have personally seen someone hit a target effectively.

In real life, they are “ridiculously powerful” at close range.

You see, out to a set range, the shotgun pattern is basically one large ball of shot. It’s roughly the size of the gauge.

The tighter the choke, the further this tight pattern is throw. If you notice, the pattern of 40 inches is pushed a little further, about five yards, as the choke gets tighter. A whole five yards. Now, remember, this is a hunting load of very small shot. Don’t misread this. A ball of birdshot can still kill a person. Just not at 40 yards. Here, it will put an eye out or something.

What you need for self defense or combat is buck shot. However, it still opens up.

As the numbers get smaller, the shot gets larger. The large the individual pellet, or shot, the more damage it can do by itself. And, this is important. As you get further and further from the muzzle, each pellet has to stand alone. So, while a #11 pellet isn’t very effective at 40 yards, and is at 5 yards, the 00 Buckshot IS effective at 40 yards. It just doesn’t get to all be together.

This above image is a pattern from a 12 gauge shotgun at 20 meters or 20 yards. As you can see, the pattern has already opened up so much that each pellet has to stand on it’s own, like a handgun round. Go further back and you may only hit your target with one or two pellets. At best, 000 Buckshot is as effective as .380 ball ammunition from a .380acp handgun. Not very powerful, huh?

As I understand it, though, video games are more like this.

As you can see, you can’t hit someone at 100 yards with a shotgun in a video game. In reality, you can. You can take a chance and hit them with a single pellet or you can switch to a slug of some caliber. They can be up to .72 caliber and can reach out to 100 yards. Trust me, they aren’t “cotton candy.” The .380acp will kill out to 100 yards IF you get lucky and hit a vital organ. The shotgun slug will easily kill at 100 yards and probably out to 200 IF you could hit the target. It’s a large ball of lead that had a lot of force behind it.

The sound of a shotgun racking is usually enough to make people think twice. The shotgun, especially a 12 gauge, has almost mythic status. Before the M16/M4, it was the most common weapon by police. It was even used by hunters of big (BIG) game because the beehive of pellets was known for it’s stopping power. But, this is at less than 50 yards. As each pellet stands alone, it loses a lot of power. It’s not “cotton candy,” but the .380acp is hardly the best round to defend your life with.

At close range, we used to call the effect of a good pattern “buck shot shock.” It’s similar to what happens when a person is shot by a submachine gun or machine gun. The multiple impacts “shock” the body and cause it to shut down faster. This is why we used to train to shoot double taps or multiple rounds into someone to stop them. More shock. Of course, you have to HIT. At range, the pellets tend to miss. When you only have a dozen pellets to start with, you can’t afford to lose any.

I carried a shotgun for most of my career. I was fine with it. For one, I knew not to try and engage a sniper with it at 100 yards. My .357 magnum was better at this range. No, my shotgun was for close range encounters where stopping was very important. It would usually kill and, even with body armor, would stop because of pain and blunt force trauma. Yes, it could even kill if they were wearing body armor. This is why we now use trauma plates.

Guns are dangerous. Most movies under-portray the effects of getting hit with bullets. I hunted a lot in Outback Australia. My choice weapon was a .22 calibre Bruno which was accurate through open sights, cheap to use, and didn’t mess up the ‘meat’. It’s deadly nonetheless when pointed in the right direction, which of course it was when in use. I’m always astounded when shooters ‘miss’ so many times in movies. Sure, some rifles are terrible, and most non-shooters aren’t much of a shot either, but a rifleman with a fair gun would rarely miss and the ‘prey’ doesn’t really have any chance against modern ballistics.

High powered rifles will take out the back of a head, with all the brains and everything else. It’s awful. A shotgun, especially a 12 gauge, is similarly horrific, but of course has its own peculiar characteristics. I once had to destroy a diseased sheep on a station with a 12 gauge, yew! I watched someone shoot a kangaroo with a 30:30 and it put a huge round hole the size of a basketball through it.

During the 90’s I had a “410” shotgun that I took camel trekking throughout Central Australia, to “shoo” and discourage wild bull camels that would come to disrupt my trekking camels. It was intended to only scattershot the wild bull camels and send them running back into the desert. I’ve not met a tougher beast than a camel. But on two occasions a pellet penetrated between the ribs, into the heart, and felled those majestic beasts like a dropped sack of potatoes. A 410 (“four-ten”) shotgun was historically a ‘woman’s gun’, in outback Australia at least, to use to kill poisonous snakes that got too close to children at station homesteads when the men were away. So those two unintended camel deaths with such a gun surprised me, and it was never used again. By comparison a 12 gauge shotgun, those in general use, packs a whacking punch and depending on the gunpowder, the shot size, the barrel length and machining, and other prevailing conditions, it can be quite lethal even at range.

I did still occasionally kill wild bull camels that were attacking my trekking herd, but did so with my bolt action .22 rifle. This was generally at night, in winter when the bulls are mad in rut. In the icy cold, roused from my warm swag by the screaming trekking camels, with a towel around me and a dim battery powered torch in one hand and my rifle in the other, I’d approach the troublesome wild bull camel that was biting my trekking camel in it’s preamble to trying to pin it down and extinguish it beneath its pedestal. If the bull camel didn’t leave, or if it began to attack me as was usually the case, I’d fire first at its rump. Often that was enough of a sharp sting to send it off. But if not and it began to bear down on me, I’d fire into its mouth, one bullet at a time from my six shot magazine, until the bone at the back of its mouth was shattered enough that one bullet would go through into its brain and almost a ton of a tough animal would crash down at my feet.

Of course a 12 gauge shotgun would do that with one resounding shot. But like in the movies, sometimes, there is really no going back, ever, from a blast with a shotgun. No degrees of freedom, or chance. Just all over, very red rover…

I’m no fan of guns or killing and I wish that movies and games didn’t glorify them, and instead portrayed realistically the horror of being hit. The pain. The destruction. The limp bloody lifelessness of a friend that will never again chat or play or laugh. The senselessness of warfare and utter buggery of aggressive soldiering. What is our society that it allows these sorts of “entertainments”? I’m not saying guns have no place, but they are not entertainment. They are a last resort in a world that now has so many better options.