Polywad has hit on a relatively new idea in shotshell development. In recent issues, I have probed other product ideas under development with Polywad. Well, here is another innovation. If the company doesn't market it themselves, I am sure another company will buy into the concept. In fact, I have been told a deal is in the works, and a new company coming into the non-toxic world is considering picking up the green loads.

Polywad GreenLite.

At the time of this review, few sources for non-toxic ammunition were available for the 28-gauge shotgun. Please, don't misunderstand. I do not consider the 28-gauge a waterfowl hunter's No. 1 choice in any way, but sometimes, a hunter who owns a sweet little 28 wants to sit back, wait for an in-your-face bird over the decoys and shoot it with the sub-gauge offering.

Most 28-gauges are of high value, so shooters pay close attention to what goes down those expensive bores. With that in mind, I think Polywad might have an edge with GreenLite 28-gauge loads.

Polywad has been developing this new shotshell for several years. The basic load (in either 28- or 20-gauge) doesn't contain a wad. When I took a round apart, I found a small, very soft paper cup that held the shot, followed by a very generous amount of buffer of a fine ground poly type. After that, I located the powder charge that sits directly under the polymer-buffering agent. I did not locate any over-powder card or plastic wad.

The load is contradictory to all modern methods of shotshell load construction. However, Jay Meneffe, the president of Polywad, never leaves a stone unturned when creating a new product.

The GreenLite 28-gauge loads have no gas seal and use only a filler material against the charge.

When the first loads arrived for testing, I tossed five live 20-gauge rounds into the bed of my pickup. That was their home for the next week as I traveled on South Dakota's dirt roads. I was trying to coax the powder to migrate into the buffer, because no wad separates them. After hauling the shotshells around, I shot them over my chronograph screens and noted no difference from test loads shot fresh from the package box. In other words, there was no migration of propellant.

As a propellant, I could have been looking at Alliant Green Dot, as it did retain a small green flake identifier in the dark black powder mix.

In terms of payload, the 28-gauge shotshells I received for review contained ½ ounce of No. 7 steel shot at 220 pellets per load. The velocity printed on the box showed 1,000 miles per hour, and a run through the chronograph screens would be required to get an fps database started.