Fellows, Anyone know whether Cabela's still handles the Herters shotshell line? I cannot find the field or target loads on their website. Thanks, Sandlapper

The Herters line of shells has been discontinued.

By popular demand. Gil

Gawd, I loved the old Herter's catalog. World's greatest this and that but fly tying components not readily available anywhere else. I think they went out of business somewhere in the late 60's to early 70's.

Unfortunate for 16ga shooters in particular. They were the least expensive 16's available. The Cheddite hulls also reload fairly well, but don't last very long.

I have one box left. Good riddance.

Casualty of the sale of Cabela's to a billionaire.

They were good shells at a good price.

One you understood that they were loaded with chilled shot, they worked just fine for most applications.

They burned clean. I never had a misfire or the slightest problem while shooting up a few dozen flats of them.

Delivered to my door for about $50, there was nothing to not like. One time I even got a free ammo can with each flat.

The Cabela's buy out has been very bad for the consumer, as was predicted to be the case.

Agree 100% I've shot thousands of the Herter's shells with nary an issue. In fact some of my best SC scores were shot with them. I still have 8 flats of the low recoil rounds that I picked up for $27.50 a flat....kind to the shoulder and old guns. MY favorite cheap shell now is the Monarch's 1oz 1350's available from Academy..they generally run around $50 a flat. I did get a killer deal once with a 20% off code and free shipping .... the UPS lady/man hates me!!!

The Cheddite loaded (France) Estate shells in the white box were also very good.

I've not seen those in a while.

I bought two flats of the 16 gauge and wish I'd bought more. They were great for shooting skeet in my sxs.

I've never used Herter's shells, and would be very reluctant to do so after reviewing an incident that occurred this past weekend at the Southern Side x Side. A shooter was using Herter's shells in his 16-bore Field Grade Smith when his right chamber exploded. The explosion burst the top of the chamber in this original and high condition gun. There was no evidence of an obstruction or any existing damage to the gun that would have caused this rupture. The recovered shell showed a 3/8" wide missing section or gap along the top of the hull from the base of the shell head to the end of the plastic case. From the visual examination it appeared this shell was simply overloaded and exploded inside the chamber. The chamber was ripped open and showed a void at least 1 1/2" wide along the top of the chamber wall with the tear stopping at the forcing cone. With the exception of the barrels the gun was not damaged and still opened and closed smoothly, locking shut like a bank vault. Metal shards from the explosion were ejected upwards away from the shooter and all bystanders, so fortunately no one was injured; but a really good gun was ruined by what, in my opinion, was a heavily overloaded shell.

And we all assume that all empty shells and remaining loaded shells were retained, the loaded shells to be dismantled one at a time and all components examined and weighed. I know that's quite a stretch, since we've never heard of anyone doing that examination after a discharge accident.

They shot fine in my Darne R10 16, but not in my M12. They'd go bang, but it took two hands to shuck the fired hull. And not so hot in my M37's.

Many of those steel based shells are like that. Steel expands on firing and stays put whereas brass expands and then contracts to a certain degree. So, the steel based hulls have more tendency to stick, esp in guns with tight chambers, as opposed to brass based shells. I reminisce about the good old days where real brass based hulls was all you got. Seems like the only premium competition shells with brass nowadays are Remington STS and Winchester AA. Federal just puked out going from brass to steel. Let’s hope Win and Rem don’t.

My experience is that difficult extraction with steel headed shells is more often encountered with generous chambers than tight ones.

Expansion into extractor grooves is common.

Sharp and narrow extractors as found on many older repeaters does not help either. Nor does a rough chamber.

This is not a problem exclusive to older guns either. Mossberg guns of current manufacture sometimes have problems with steel headed shells right out of the box. I was trapped in a duck blind for a weekend with a friend shooting a brand new 3 1/2" Mossberg and we drove each fired shell out with a stick.

That said, the Herters and other euro brands loaded in Cheddite and Fiocchi hulls run fine in 'most' guns.

My Italian made automatics love the stuff.

I bought a new 870 SuperMag to use with steel for ducks. First trip with it I took it to a snipe field and shot RGL's. It choked on RGL's. Ironically, Winchester promo loads did fine. Both steel headed.

I have shot Herter's shells from Cabelas in 12, 16, 20 and 28 for at least five years now with never a single problem. I have used the 20's, both 2.75s and 3 inch, in my doubles and semi-autos with nary a hiccup. The 16's were fired in a Browning A5 Sweet Sixteen (current new model), again with nary a problem. The 28's from a Dickinson with no problems in firing or ejecting from any of the aforementioned guns. I think they were a great buy for the money.

“A Blow-Up Post-Mortem” was published in The Double Gun & Single Shot Journal, Vol. 27, Issue 3, p. 17, 2016 and is summarized here
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZnptAPvQIlWG5n5UU2FmKcFpYtVmOSc4b7K7G9IBs4g/edit

Tom: could you please let the owner of the gun know that I would be very interested in examining the remains, the shell used at the burst, and as Bill suggested any shells from the same box that he might have retained. The probably cause might be established simply by examining for evidence of chamber/forcing cone lengthening.
He can contact me at drewhausemd@yahoo.com

The questions he might consider:

Exact chamber and forcing cone length

Exact chamber dimensions. The entrance to the chambers of c. 1900 12g U.S. doubles is usually .809” -.812”, tapering to .795” - .798”.

Exact bore dimensions

Is there pitting in the chamber, forcing cones, or just past the cones?

Is there evidence of chamber and/or forcing cone lengthening?

Minimal wall thickness at the end of the chamber

Minimal wall thickness at the forcing cone

Minimal wall thickness around the burst edges

Does the burst barrel appear to have a “ring bulge”? Is the rib lifted?

Confirmation that the load was factory? Which load? If not, what was the reload recipe and the expertise of the reloader?

Is there visual evidence of over-pressure on the remains of the shell? Extractor imprint on the brass? Cratered primer?

Did the shooter notice anything abnormal the previous shot through the burst barrel? Sound? Recoil? Was the target broken?

Currently, the "best buy" in 12 gauge shot shells is Academy Sports. Either $50 or $55 per case; and they pay shipping on orders over $100. No FFL needed. If anyone is aware of a less expensive source, please post.

What about low cost 16 gauge ammo?

I don't shoot 16 gauge. Academy's best price on 16's is $8/box, with free shipping on orders over $100.

Gander Outdoors has Remington Gun Clubs, both 12 and 20, $50/flat. The 12's I saw were 1 1/8 oz @ 1145 fps. 20's: 7/8oz @ 1200fps.

Really a shame they don't produce 16ga Gun Clubs.

I defer to others who've had experience with "catastrophic failures". That being said, a gap along the entire length of the hull sounds like it may have been an obstruction. It seems to me that an overloaded shell would show most damage to the hull at the case mouth. Likewise the damage to the barrel most evident where the case mouth opened and exerted significant overpressure. The gap or rip sounds like something kept the case mouth from opening properly, the result being that it blew through the wall of the hull. But that's only theory on my part.

There is a Remington Gun Club 16. loaded with an oz. of 7 1/2 and $8 a box. Not a wide selection and a bit pricey for large volume shooting. Those Herter's shells were the thing I bought from Cabela's after the take over. No reason to go there ever again.

Was that vintage Elsie built for modern ammo? The Herters shells are up to SAAMI pressure limits if I recall correctly.

Hot on the trail gentlemen, with a likely diagnosis.
The gun was a very high condition regular frame 16g with fluid steel barrels.
With the permission of the owner and the picture taker, I'll start another thread after a bit.

The bolded part is pretty much what Ithaca Gun in Ohio says also, for $150 they will convert an older finicky 37 to eat those thin base hulls:

"The problem you are experiencing is something we have developed a fix for by welding the extractor notches shut and re-cutting the notches to establish a better seal of the chamber wall on the entire brass side wall. The problem only seems to have presented itself in the last 10-15 years with the use of cheaper and at times thinner materials being used for the shell brass."

Of course as you also mentioned a clean and polished chamber helps and is the first place to start, and is a lot cheaper.

I reload the 16 in 7/8 oz. for my fixed breech guns with Cheddite hulls which are different hulls than the Herter's which are also Cheddite. The Herter's are a thinner hull all the way around. Never had a problem in any of my 37's with the bulk Cheddite skived hulls I reload, even in my prewar guns.

I picked up a dozen flats of the Herter's in 16 ga. when it looked like they were going to be hard to get and they started selling them by the box instead of the flat. I use them in my new style A5 Sweet 16 as it takes a full 1 oz. load to eject consistently. But some of the shells from the last batch of Herter's fail to eject consistently, which never happened before. So I have taken to loading a Federal first, which always ejects, and Herter's for the second shell on doubles so if it hangs it doesn't matter. I have read of a few others also having issues with some of the last batch of Herter's before Cabela's discontinued them. For $5 a box I would still pick up all I could get my hands on though.

Just got a text from a friend that Fleet Farm has Gun Clubs on sale for $5 a box right now in 20 & 12.

The Herter's 16g gauge shells wear the CIP license/logo/label whatever it is.

16 is the only gauge I have left, but I seem to remember that the 12 gauge Herter's were also Loaded to CIP standards.

Viewing the initial pictures of the failed LC Smith, my confidence in the Herter's shells is unshaken.

There is a lot of variation in the steel head shells.

The heads will all fall within the dimensions published by SAAMI or CIP as the case may be, but if you put a micrometer to them you will note that the euro made shells have on average a smaller diameter head and thinner rim than US made shells.

Remington Gun Club in 12 gauge is right at SAAMI maximum diameter, at least the last ones I measured were.

I bought several flats of the Herter's 16 gauge laods. The metal heads on about half of them were corroded and would not eject from my graded Fox 16g. The chambers are pristine and the ejectors are crisp and fully functional.

I do not like standing in a dove field and trying to pry hulls out of my gun with a pocketknife while birds are flying by.

I would NOT buy them again if they were $20 a flat.

You and me both, brother. I don't even like pulling them out of an extractor gun at those times.

SRH

It’s a shell built using the Cheddite hull. If your gun or guns had issues extracting them, they’d probably have issues extracting ANY shell built using the Cheddite, including but not limited to RST’s. Seeing how pretty much all Cheddite hulls are built the exact same way.

And why on earth would you use shells that have corroded heads? That in itself would more than likely lead to extraction issues in any gun. Good lord.

On the flip side, my shooting buddy has shot oodles of those Italian Herters loads in 16 gauge, I never witnessed an issue. He gets about 4 to 5 reloads out of the hulls too before they’re trashed. I myself have popped off around a thousand or so of the 12 & 20 gauge loads without a hiccup as well. Even a finicky Franchi 48 chews em up and spits em out. That’s saying something.

Corrosion on steel head shells is a known storage issue.

They certainly were not shipped from Italy that way.

I've been sold corroded Winchester shells from Bass Pro, and corroded Fiocchi shells from Guns Galore.

Brass head shells are not immune from storage related deterioration either.

The steel head shells do not age well in paper boxes in any environment above 50% or so humidity.

Considering the stuff likely gets here in a shipping container on a boat it's amazing the condition on delivery is as good as it usually is.

No Gun Club 16's, but there are Rem Lead Game Loads in 16ga: 1 ounce, 6-7 1/2-8. The hulls reload pretty well, but I happened to find a good reloading recipe for 7/8 oz in Cheddite hulls, and I have several flats of new Herter's to shoot up. No problems at all with them in several different 16's I've used. But looks like that may have been luck of the draw. So far, haven't found any corrosion on the heads.

I have shot thousands of Cheddite hull loads in my Fox 16 and it works flawlessly with them. I loaded from a fresh box of Herter's shells and did not inspect the heads with birds coming in. After the problem ejecting the first load, I inspected ALL the shells in the flat and about half were corroded. I had to sort out the ones that were usable and sperate them from the corroded ones. OF COURSE I DID NOT CONTINUE SHOOTING THE SHELLS WITH CORRODED HEADS. GOOD LORD!

I put this on the vendor who sold them.

How does the vendor who sold them control shipping conditions in a “sealed” cardboard case? Gimme a break. I put it on you, who loaded your gun with shells that had corroded heads. Do a better job of paying attention to detail and look at what you put into your gun before loading it. Even by your own admission the shells with out corroded heads ran fine, yet you pull no punches disparaging the entire line of Italian made, Cheddite hulled shells that work fine for 99% of the people who’ve used them.
Corroded bases on these newer steel based hulls that are brass or zinc washed is not uncommon. Check em before you load em.