Slug Selection

[huntman]

My brother and I both show the Remington 870 Deer/Turkey combo 12gauges with the riffled slug barrel and have had great results with the Remington Core-Lokt Ultra Sabot's. I got my shotgun first and bought 2 boxes of every type of Sabot from Shooters Choice in Waterloo (winchester,remington and about 3 other manufatures) the winchesters I found to be the absolute worse with some even making elongated holes in the paper targets (sabot tumbling in the air I would guess).

The Core-Lokt's were the best and we could get groups with both our guns of 4" at 250 yards and were hitting inside 6" consistantly at 300 yards.

We both practice quite a bit before the season and put a good 5 or 6 boxes thru. My brother dropped a nice buck at 267 yards this past fall and made some masive destruction even at that distance. I nailed a great 9point in the shoulder running beside me at 10 yards and made quite the mess but he wasn't going anywhere. My father also dropped a smaller 6point with a challenger (hit ribs and lung) and was a complete pass thru and looked it didn't even mushroom at all. This all happened with 10 minutes on the last saturday in our season....great time and every slug did its job...just that the challenger's I thought were less than impressive in field use also. My dad will be getting the same 870 this year as we have and shooting the Core-Lokts.

Remington also just came out with a new Premier AccuTip
Bonded Sabot Slug and its looking pretty good so I am going to order in a few boxes to try. These slugs are also 58 caliber which is the largest tipped sabot on the market currently and I think they look promising but won't hold my breath untill I try some out.

Here is a pic of the Bucks we drops last November.


RyanB

250 yards, 300 yards?? out of shotgun,... fully rifled or not i think that is pushing it by 100 yards!

[Boo]

Although I do not like the recoil my SBE with a Winchester Partition Golds I dropped a doe at 180 yards. Terminal performance is awesome. The very best thing to do is to try different slugs in your barrel to see what works best. I've heard varied terminal performance reports on most full sized slugs but no bad reports on the Partition Golds.

[RyanB]

[quote="huntman
250 yards, 300 yards?? out of shotgun,... fully rifled or not i think that is pushing it by 100 yards![/quote]

each to there own on this subject. Its no different than guys taking a long range shots with a riffle (400-600) yard shots on say a moose.

If you are confident and your gun, distance (I always range find before shooting at anything more than say 100 yards) and other factors such as weather then I say your good to go. We practice practices and practice some more and shooting at these distances is never free hand.

If you have never shot a riffled slug riffle its hard to imagine going out that far. I don't feel confident shooting challenger slugs out of my dads smooth bore past 35 yards but thats just me. I see no difference shooting my slug gun than a 30-06 or anything else. In fact if I land up going moose hunting this year the slug gun will deffinatly be my first gun of choice as we younger guys in camp usually get elected to do all the walking thru the thick stuff.

RyanB

[huntman]

[quote="huntman
250 yards, 300 yards?? out of shotgun,... fully rifled or not i think that is pushing it by 100 yards!

each to there own on this subject. Its no different than guys taking a long range shots with a riffle (400-600) yard shots on say a moose.

If you are confident and your gun, distance (I always range find before shooting at anything more than say 100 yards) and other factors such as weather then I say your good to go. We practice practices and practice some more and shooting at these distances is never free hand.

If you have never shot a riffled slug riffle its hard to imagine going out that far. I don't feel confident shooting challenger slugs out of my dads smooth bore past 35 yards but thats just me. I see no difference shooting my slug gun than a 30-06 or anything else. In fact if I land up going moose hunting this year the slug gun will deffinatly be my first gun of choice as we younger guys in camp usually get elected to do all the walking thru the thick stuff.

RyanB[/quote]

If your shotgun can perform at that distance then all the power to you. I guess i cant be critical of you because i have never tried that. I own and shoot a 12 gauge 870 fully riffled as well as a Benelli Nova 20 gauge fully rifled and i just cant see a slug with that much weight getting out to those distances.

[Long Trang]

.

[shafferm]

You may want to give the Federal Tru Ball slugs a try as they are supposed to produce a tighter fit in smooth bore barrels. I don't personally have any experience with them but most places seem to give them decent reviews. Perhaps some of the other members have had the chance to try them out.
http://www.cabelas.com/prod-1/0035390215988a.shtml

The slugs that I have been using are the Hornady SST shotgun slugs. They are a bit pricey but they produce amazing groups for me and I have taken deer out to 200 yards with them. Although that was shooting prone with my bipod on my 11-87. I drilled and tapped my forearm to accommodate the bipod. It does look a bit odd with it on a shotgun, but it works great.
http://www.hornady.com/media/2006catalo ... hotgun.pdf

[Allan]

I usually get my rifled slugs from canadian tire, and they have a very limited selection. I will be visiting Bass Pro this month and collect a few different brands.

By the way, SIR sells a Mossberg 535 AT model 12 gauge that comes with
a smooth bore and a rifled barrel for $330 delivered to your door.

[RyanB]

Ive heard some of the true slug guns can reach that far. Mine has a removable barrel so it'll never accurately get past 150 yards.

this doesn't really make to much of a difference because just like any riffle or shot gun...the chamber is actually the barrel so its always true even when taking appart the shotgun for cleaning. Now...one thing that could possibly change is signting if you are using a B-square scope mount or mounting the scope back on the reciever. This is why you mostly see the riffled barrels come with the canteliever scope mounts which are always true as long as nothing gets nocked out of true.

Not to many companys make a true slug gun (infact the only one I can really think of is Ithica) http://www.ithacagun.com/deerslayer3.html

They make a fixed barrel which is based off there Model #37 but is a fixed barrel which can't be taken appart. This makes it more like a Remington 7600 pump action riffle!!! it also comes with a fluted barrel and great accuracy right out of the box.

The unforunate thing for anyone up here in Canada is that at this time there are no dealers up here and getting it from the USA is a total pain....thats why I am shooting my 870 with the slug barrel.

Ryan

RyanB

[Pydpiper]

My first gun was my 870 camo combo, cantilevered/rifled barrel with a smooth bore too, I bought a cheap scope and stuck it on to try it and it hasn't come off since. I shoot 175 yards with it and get consistent results with Partition Golds, I can't see why it wouldn't go a bit further. It is expensive to mess around with at $5 a shot so I switched to some cheaper sabots from Canadian Tire, get just as good of groups with a significant drop on long shots.
I don't hunt with my slug gun, I just bought it for fun. It stays accurate when I switch back and fourth from smooth bore to sabot I do not need to check my scope, but I always do anyways. I find the variances come from how tight I place the barrel cap back on, it is now marked with white paint so it always starts and stops in the exact same location.
I have an Ithaca 87 I use with Challengers and buckshot for my coyote gun around the house and camping, that silly thing gets great groups too, but I have to rethink my choice of slugs after seeing TPM's photo of a spent slug. Still good enough for coyotes, but a bit more expansion would be nice.

[TPM]

Long Trang wrote:
Ive heard some of the true slug guns can reach that far. Mine has a removable barrel so it'll never accurately get past 150 yards.


this doesn't really make to much of a difference because just like any riffle or shot gun...the chamber is actually the barrel so its always true even when taking appart the shotgun for cleaning.

You are right, the cantalever type barrels do keep the point of impact consistant when removing and replacing the barrel but I think Long Trang is refering to accuracy in general. Accuracy is acheived by a combination of many things and one of them is tight lock-up. This has always been a weak point with slug guns. They are primarily designed to shoot shot shells and precise, tight lockup like you would get from a bolt action rifle is just not possible with the design of an average pump shotgun. Another weak point is the trigger. Again, their design and manfacture is not condusive with accurate slug shooting. A good shotgun trigger will break around three pounds, many factory triggers break around six or seven pounds. You'd really have to tune most factory triggers down to get good consistant accuracy out the gun.
You done very well to get the groups you get at the ranges you said.

I see no difference shooting my slug gun than a 30-06 or anything else.

The biggest diffence would be trajectory. You're talking about a 180 grain projectile out of your 30-06 verses a 385 grain projectile out of your slug gun. I don't care how fast it's launched, something weighing 385 grains will drop quickly past 200-250 yards.

[Doe Master]

Pydpiper that challenger was from our big deer last year .I always thought the challengers were super accurate on paper but as pointed out before by TPM we are not hunting paper . To say the least we as a group were very dissappointed by the horrible non expansion of the challenger that went through a shoulder and came to rest up against the femur .Here is a picture of the deer, he was no puny deer to offer no resistance for the slug.If I remember right he weighed around 250 plus dressed .

[Boo]

An interesting tidbit. The only "true" production slug gun I've ever seen is the Browning A Bolt. Not many were made but if I ever get a chance I will snap one up. I will not tell you guys what range and what accuracy this thing is capable of but let me tell you that it is an awesome gun. Most interesting is that it is a smooth bore and it uses a 6" choke and the accuracy blows away my SBE by a long shot! (sorry about the pun). What helps accuracy is lock up behind the shell, trigger quality and the rigidity between the scope and the muzzle(a bit simplified). My SBE has all of that but the lock up is better in the A Bolt. The A Bolt has a much better trigger as well but then autoloader shotgun triggers are meant to be slapped not squeezed.

[RyanB]

I have a Remington Core-Lokt Ultra Slug I recovered from a doe I shot 2 years ago. It was a complete pass thru (double lung and didn't hit the ribs) and then in to a big old round bale she was standing infront of(she ran 15 yards and toppled over). I never even thought of looking for the slug untill my brother figuring out the distance from the bale I shot from (167 yards) saw where she was standing and blood spatter directly on the bale. she had just come out into the feild and was standing only about 5 feet from the bale when I shot. he dug about 3 or 4" in and found the slug. it had had mushroomed but didn't fold the petals back down. when I skinned her out there was about a 3/8" entry hole and the exit hole was raged and aprox 3/4" so it deffinatly opened up in her. I have weighed the slug and its about 40 grains light and the lead tip has now become seperated from the coper body (happened when I was cleaning it up)

Anyway, here are the pics. its a pretty neat keep sake I thought (I thought about drilling a hole thru and putting it on a key chain or something)







Ryan

[butch]

\does antbody out there hunt moose with a shotgun?? Last year Moose hunting I carried both rifle for moose and a shot gun for grouse/rabbits that I would hunt on the way back to camp for dinner. Just wondering if I could thin out the gear. Thank you in advance Butch

[TNhunterKMC]

I have a hunting buddy that uses his 870 with a b-square mount with a rifled choke and he swears by the Remington Buckhammer round. In my H&R USH 20 gauge I have tried most of the popular sabot rounds. I like the Hornady SST pretty well.