Well you know how it is. You've forgotten to answer the most basic question that determines the success of a new product. What is it for? Most slugs are shot at deer, so why would Barnes design one to behave like a real bullet? The answer is that the arms companies don't want to cut their own throats. If the line between shotguns and rifles becomes blurred and a shotgun becomes capable of long range performance, the jurisdictions that mandate shotgun only deer seasons will naturally mandate smooth bore shotguns only from a public safety standpoint, which was the purpose in the first place. Perhaps with the success of sabot artillery rounds from smooth bores they would mandate lead slugs only, or even foster slugs only. Should that happen, sales of the wonder slugs will drop below what is feasible to keep them in production. All the money spent on R&D will be lost on a product that has no purpose and no market. How good can the wonder slugs afford to be in that case? They must be balanced for deer sized game, hence the light weight for the reduced caliber. The traditional slugs that you seem to have abandoned in favor of the wonder slugs are useful beyond deer size targets due to their caliber and mass. By your own admission 200 yards is the limit of practical accuracy with the wonder slugs; while many 19th century black powder rifles can keep rounds on target at 300 yards and beyond. I'd like to see Billy Dixon's Adobe Walls shot replicated with a shotgun, even a rifled shotgun with wonder slugs. It has been replicated with black powder cartridges. When long range shots with scatterguns are making headlines, the legislators along the populous eastern seaboard will be hard at work to level the playing field once again.
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