A quick Google search shows birdshot has an effective rang on the order of 40 - 50 yards. Now, you still have to be competant with a shotgun, but the public perception of shotguns is generally skewed. They have a much tighter spread and longer range than movies and games would have one believe.
Depends on the choke. A 12 gauge full choke turkey gun can probably put a pretty tight pattern that range, but it's gonna work better with bigger shot. If you want super fine shot and a full pattern, you aren't shooting that far.
GarandThumb did some tests in a video a while back. IIRC he did both choked and not, along with different types of shot and slugs. everything but birdshot was pretty effective out to a couple dozen yards? I'll track it down and drop a link after I've rewatched.
EDIT: so in "How Deadly are Shotguns", they fire 00 Buck unchoked at around 7 - 8 minutes, and it is still getting a drone-sized spread at 21 yards. In the video "How Far are Shotguns Deadly? BirdShot, Slugs, and 00 Buckshot", we see birdshot and 00 Buck used choked all the way out to 120 yards. From my perspective, birdshot and 00 buck start having a potentially viable spread at 50 yards (slowmo spread footage at 14 minutes).
I think that most likely, a pellet size between birdshot and 00 would be better, to provide that peppering effect while still delivering greater impulse per pellet. Garand also mentions in the first video that chokes can actually cause wider spread when used with shot, so unchoked shotguns may be ideal for an anti-drone function.
This is about drones that are cheap and can shoot you with a bullet. Sure a +1M$ drone will kill you from behind the horizon, but a repurposed consumer drone operates on the same ranges as handheld guns and as such could be shot by a handheld gun. If you can hit it, which is why you use a shotgun to increase your ods
it's not necessarily with a bullet. Most improvised attack drones drop explosive payloads, since it's both simpler to set up and simpler to use. Outfitting a drone with a gun takes making a complicated system for aiming it, while a payload drone just needs some 3d-printed parts, some extra wiring, and usually just a single servo.
Are the cheap drones really shooting people with bullets? I was under the impression they just had small explosives strapped to them and were single-use.
you're correct, they do not strap guns to improvised attack drones. they're not necessarily single-use either, though. A kamikaze drone will detonate its payload while its still attached, which is an option. There is plenty of footage of IADs which use a servo to just physically drop a payload onto targets from above, and those could potentially be used over and over. I think the kamikaze version is able to be more effective, for a variety of reasons, but both versions seem to be seeing use.
I'm guessing you mean just the disposable kind of drones popularized in Ukraine? We've been dropping hellfire missles from Reaper drones at 10,000+ feet for a couple of decades now.
Go to YouTube and search "Ukrainian drone drops bomb" and you'll find tons of them. Like this one where the soldiers had no chance of hitting the drone.