I don't think that the plastic shell over the pellets fouls the bore. If anything, it adds more fragments to the shot pattern at "normal" range for these loads. From my experience, that's within 6-8 feet at the most.
Jerry's right about Rattlers. 95% of all my encounters had the snake alerting me to it's presence in plenty of time to avoid. Were I live you have to actually LOOK carefully where you are walking, even going out the front door. For some reason they love to crawl along the door sills. My wife had a very close call stepping out the patio door while BBQing one night, as she turned to face a coiled, hissing young (3 rattles) snake that would not leave. Woke up one A.M. to find 3 shed skins within 15 feet of the front door.
My closest call was when working in the driveway on my lifted 4X4. I was getting out of the cab, and I almost didn't catch myself in mid-air as I saw my foot coming down on a 6 footer (or so he seemed at the time). I leave ALL snakes alone in the wild. I only intervene when they decide to hangout within the fence line, since our pets might not be as smart. DON"T get me started about the Pack Rats around here.
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