Maybe not related, but I can recall a shotshell reloading article probably in Gun Digest from maybe the mid seventies. It was about spreader load experimenting, I guess before spreader type wads and inserts were available. Anyway, the author used cut square and flattened disc shaped shot. Very foggy now, but I believe he was getting usable short range patterns that quickly fell apart well out of typical distribution.
Cube shot and disc shot both used to be available. I got some disc shot from, I believe, Orvis and shot some patterns. Did what it was supposed to: really opened the pattern. But beyond about 20 yards, as noted above, there wasn't much of a pattern left. And even if there had been, I might have been skeptical of the remaining energy in flattened shot at longer ranges.
