lead shot deformation?

[Rockhound]

I shot one of my nickel plated 5.5 handloads today into a phone book at 40 the shot were really deformed so i fired a federal #5 copper plated into the other side of same book and not near as many pellet were deformed and those weren't as bad. This concerns me i wanna shoot the best but not sure if i should be handloading cp or np

[BandedSpur]

Depends on where you got the NP stuff. BPI's NP is softer than PRs.

Yep. All depends on the quality of the underlying lead pellet. Hard (i.e. high antimony), highly spherical unplated lead shot will deform less than soft nickel plated shot. The best nickel plated shot will outperform any other type of shot, including CP. But not all nickel plated shot is created equal. PR's is the best available.

[Rockhound]

Ill order some from pr and try it. On a side note there was very little differenc in penetration of the to but i just dont like the fact it deformed so much