Taurus Judge buckshot ammo test: Federal 410 Handgun 000 vs 4 buck in ballistic gel

The Taurus Judge can chamber and shoot .410 shotgun shells. Some of them are great performers, some are terrible performers. In this test, I'm going to try out two types of buckshot for the Judges (with 3" cylinder/chamber): Federal .410 Handgun ammo in two varieties, the 5-pellet 000 buckshot (part #PD413JGE000) and the 9-pellet 4 buckshot (part #PD413JGE4B).
Both of these are 3" cartridges, and I'm using the Raging Judge Magnum as the test gun. There is nothing "raging" about these shotshells, and nothing unique about them that would require the Raging Judge; I'm just using the Raging Judge because that's the only .410 revolver I have that has a 3" chamber. These shells will also work in regular Judges that have 3" chambers.
This test is different than most of my ammo tests. In this test, I'm not evaluating the performance of one pull of the trigger; instead I'm loading up the whole cylinder and blasting the living tar out of the gel block with every round as quick as I possibly can. The idea is to simulate what you'd probably do if you were faced with a home invader, and I'm trying to determine just how much damage the Judge can do, with each of these loads.
In this testing, it's obvious that the 000 buck is a far superior load. It literally cut the gel block in half and left over 20 bullets buried deep in the optimal penetration zone (13 to 17.5" deep). The 4 buck, by comparison, largely missed the target and those pellets that did hit, did comparatively very little damage.
In patterning tests, the 000 buckshot delivered a nice tight group of approximately 2.25" from a distance of 7 yards. The 4 buck, on the other hand, spread out to almost 15", meaning that only five of the nine pellets actually landed on the target! Three others were clearly misses, and I never did find where the ninth pellet went -- but only five landed on the target.
Note: I'm not making any claims for these videos other than that these are the results I achieved, in my own testing, from the stated pistol(s). I have no intention to make a blanket endorsement or indictment of any product, only to review and report what I found in a given instance. Obviously it is incumbent upon each individual to conduct their own research and make up their own mind about which defensive ammunition is best for their own purposes, in their own firearms. Also keep in mind that individual firearms can be persnickety; my Judge may feed a particular round consistently whereas your Judge might not work as well with those rounds, so -- please conduct your own testing before trusting any particular ammo.
The standards I use to judge bullet performance are the standards established at the 1987 and 1993 Wound Ballistics Conferences, and subsequently adopted by the FBI. You can read more on these subjects in my blog articles, including:
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