Kill ’em Dead, with Browning’s Wicked Blend

Ryan Barnes for SPLIT REED

Cover Photo Courtesy of Browning Ammo

It’s becoming the “latest and greatest” thing- mixed loads. Tungsten and steel. Bismuth and steel. Copper-plated steel. Anything to try to get a pellet to hit the target harder and inflict more damage. Browning has come up with the new “Wicked Blend” shotshell to do exactly that!

I had the privilege of shooting these shells at geese for a few days, and I’ll be the first to tell you, they hit HARD! My usual shell of choice is a 3.5” BB shot for giant Canada geese. However, this time, I was shooting Browning Wicked Blend 3” BB and 1 steel and bismuth mix. I started out a bit skeptical, but after the first volley of shots and a double of big Northern migrators fell stone dead, I was pretty confident in the product that Browning Ammunition had brought to the table.

We killed a quick three-man limit of honkers. No sailors, no “I hit that one, we might need to go look for it”. Just a pile of dead birds that came into the decoys, and never left after they ate a pattern of Wicked Blend steel and bismuth.

So why is it so good? First, Browning isn’t going to release something that isn’t a top-tier product. Second, bismuth is an extremely dense bi-metal, that helps carry a tighter pattern longer, with a harder-hitting payload farther downrange. If you’ve ever been hit with an object that has a lot of weight to it, you understand why that has some importance to it. Browning has incorporated a balance of 30% bismuth, with 70% steel, and still maintains a 1450 FPS muzzle velocity in their 12 gauge loads. Other loads have had to compromise speed while mixing in other non-toxic shot like bismuth or cut back the amount of tungsten to get their velocity back up to par. Browning, on the other hand, has found the happy medium that allows them to have both a devastatingly heavy payload, that both hits hard, and flies fast!

One thing that I was most impressed with after my own experience shooting the Wicked Blend shells was how clean they burn! Being an avid muzzleloader hunter, you pay attention to the small stuff like that. There was hardly any build-up of spent gunpowder on my action, and my barrel was as clean as you could hope for after shooting a limit of geese. That’s something that you tend to care about when the temperatures plunge and a clean gun can mean the difference between cycling properly or breaking things down in the field to get things back to working order. There are some shells where after one hunt you need to break everything down and give everything a good once over just to make sure it’ll cycle the next time out. Browning’s Wicked Blend shells don’t fall into that category.

There are no two ways about it, these shells hit hard, and they make for easy retrieving work. You can visit this Browning Ammo Link to see things for yourself and find a distributor near you.

Editors Note:

Corey Mulhair for SPLIT REED

I for one enjoy mixing it up. I don’t want every hunt to be the same, and I often make sure of this by bringing my Browning Silver Field 20ga with me when I am on what I would refer to as a ‘dedicated’ duck hunt. That might be an afternoon sit tucked into a slough edge with two-dozen decoys and my dog, looking for greenheads to pitch into a small water pocket to get a drink, on their way from the roost to a field feed, or in a stubble field with five-dozen duck decoys and a few spinners as I traffic ducks around a high feed area. Either way, I love the combination of #3&5 Browning Wicked Blend 20ga out of the Browning Silver Field when it comes to mallard ducks on the prairies. The low recoil, quick reset to target action of a 20ga, coupled with the effective shot size combination for ducks being shot at anywhere from 10-40 yards out is a surefire way to add ducks to the freezer before they migrate south. If you’re looking to mix things up, or already shoot 20ga loads, I would without hesitation recommend Browning Wicked Blend shotshells, especially if you like sending your dog to pick up ducks right below where you shot them.