best gun design The Payoff’s The Payload

Two new Winchester shotshells combine the best defensive aspects of birdshot, buckshot and slugs.

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Stacking the odds The PDX1-410 in 2.5-inch trim (far left) features three Defense Discs over 12 plated BB shot. The PDX1-12 (left) features three pellets of buffered 00 plated buckshot in front of a one-ounce Foster-type slug.

As shotshells continue to gain recognition as a highly effective choice for home and personal defense, Winchester has moved to develop an entirely new category of shotshell loads, designed to combine the best qualities of what were previously two separate types of shotgun ammunition.

Joining the company’s Supreme Elite family of PDX1 Personal Defense ammunition for 2010 are the .410-bore PDX1-410 and the 12-gauge PDX1-12, each of which integrate the payloads of a shotshell and a slug load into a single shell.

The new PDX1-410 in particular is unlike any shotgun load ever marketed. It was designed specifically for use in th family of .410/.45 Colt revolvers, which have forever changed the perception of the effectiveness of the .410 shotshell as an appropriate defense load in a concealment-size rifled-barrel handgun.

Before the PDX1-410, Judge users were limited to preexisting “hunting loads,” which are of three basic types birdshot, buckshot and slug. Of the three, buckshot loads have been generally deemed the most effective, but they are limited in terms of pattern spread compared to birdshot, and they give up penetration when compared to a slug. The PDX1-410 puts all three capabilities into one load, featuring a distinctive black hull and black-oxide high-base head.

The 2½-inch payload combines three plated “Defense Disc” projectiles and 12 pellets of plated BB shot (the three-inch PDX1-410 experimental version contains four discs). The combination of stacked-in-line Defense Discs functions as “mini slugs,” and the following dozen BB shot bridge the gap between birdshot and buckshot in terms of pattern spread and penetration. The result is an ideal personal-protection load for short range. The PDX1-410 is effective in conventional .410 shotguns as well as .410-chambered revolvers or other .410 handguns. And it’s also suitable for varmint and pest control.

When fired from a conventional smoothbore shotgun, the pattern dispersion of the PDX1-410’s BBs is comparable to what you would expect from a standard .410 shotshell, with the three Defense Discs remaining centered in the pattern with an impact velocity comparable to a .32-caliber handgun bullet. When fired from the rifled-bore Judge revolver, the rotation given to the BBs’ shot column spreads the pattern very quickly (about the diameter of a human face at 10 feet), making it extraordinarily effective at extreme close range—just point and shoot. And even at longer distances (say, the length of a large living room), the lesser spread of the Defense Discs’ trajectories will keep their lethal effect on-target.

Taurus Judge revolvers, incidentally, are available in barrel lengths running from two inches in the compact Public Defender versions to six inches in the sport and hunting Tracker versions, with different rates in the pattern spread due to the increased velocities from the longer barrels. Judge owners who use the new PDX1-410 loads should pattern the shells from their particular gun at various typical defense distances to become familiar with their exact delivery characteristics and pattern spread.