HeviShot’s newest waterfowl load, HeviHitter, combines equal sizes of steel and original, extra-dense, 12-grams-per-cubic-centimeter HeviShot into one shell. Most mixed loads use smaller, premium pellets with larger steel to match ballistics as closely as possible and keep shotstrings short. HeviHitter is all about putting more energy into the pattern and hitting harder.
When I patterned these and wrote them up in our waterfowl load review, I speculated that a 20/80 mix of HeviShot to steel might not contain enough HeviShot pellets to make much difference. I shot several phone-book-sized paperbacks and found 1 to 4 HeviShot pellets in each, along with an average of around 25 to 30 steel pellets, at 40 yards with an IM choke. With only a few HeviShot pellets on target, I wasn’t convinced I’d see a difference in the field with these loads.
Then I shot HeviHitter 2/2 blends last week in Canada. To HeviHitter, I can only quote Shaquille O’Neill: “I owe you an apology. I wasn’t really familiar with your game.”
A Closer Look at HeviShot HeviHitter
There was a group from Alaska in the lodge with us. We’d brought a variety of ammo to try, and we gave them some to shoot the day before an afternoon hunt. I asked one of the hunters later what he thought. “That HeviHitter makes them go limp,” he said. That was enough to make me curious and shoot it myself the next day. I was so impressed that I shot it for the rest of the trip. So did everyone else in our group.
The man from Alaska was right. Birds went limp when I shot them with HeviHitter. Stationed on the right end of the blind—getting the right end is one of the few perks of being left-handed—it was my job to shoot birds that swung wide on my side. So, besides shooting the same close-range decoying birds as everyone else, I took some longer shots, out to 40 and 50 yards. The longest was a snow goose that should have been in easy range, except I temporarily forgot that my rental Maxus had a right-handed safety. I didn’t push it off until the goose was out there, but the bird folded just as all the others did. I made a point to check it for pellet wounds on the cleaning table, and it wasn’t just a lucky pellet in the brain that killed that goose. It had been solidly hit.
There is a tradeoff. HeviShot pellets weigh more than steel, so you get fewer total pellets in a mixed-shot load. So, with a 1 ¼-ounce 12-gauge load of HeviHitter 2/2s, you get about 135 pellets, compared to 156 in a load of straight steel 2s. But, one in five HeviHitter pellets is a HeviShot pellet with about twice the energy of the steel shot in the load. While that tradeoff didn’t look so good on paper, from what I saw in the field last week, it’s worth it.
HeviHitter comes in 1500 fps, 1 ¼-ounce 3-inch 12-gauge loads of BB/BB, 2/2, 3/3, and 4/4. Sixteen-gauge HeviHitter is a one-ounce, 1350 fps shell in 2/2 or 4/4. In 3-inch 20-gauge, you get 7/8 ounce of 2/2, 3/3, or 4/4. The 3-inch 28-gauge is 3/4-ounce 2/2 or 4/4 at 1450 fps. The shells list for $48.99-$49.99 per 25.
THE 1871 CLUB
