Can I shoot slugs??

[woolly]

Firing a Foster style slug out of a full choke barrel will not hurt it a bit. Maybe I'm old but in years gone by the only shotguns that slugs were shot out of were full choke in my neck of the woods. They are undersize to begin with thus the spotty accuracy in most guns.
The guy with the split barrel either fired a hot handload or drove the muzzle into the mud before shooting. Never heard of a barrel splitting before.

I Agree the old lead "rifled" slugs tended to undersize and under most cases could be used safely in full choke firearms. And I agree that 40 or so years ago full choke was indeed the most popular choke made. Only speciality guns (trap, skeet etc.) seemed to be choked other than full.

However the owner claims he was using factory loads and was shooting a clear barrel. However I think he may have used sabots which are designed to be used in rifled cylinder choke barrels. The barrel split does not indicate an obstruction. According to the gunsmith he sees one of these splits every couple of years and it is always someone shooting slugs from a full choke single. Perhaps the older singles had a tighter full choke than todays guns. Who knows?

I watched a fellow in a Fredericton area gun shop buy some slugs by asking the fellow behind the counter for some 12 ga slugs. He was passed a box of Federal sabots and asked if they were any good. After being told they were top quality he stated he also wanted some buckshot. My guess is he planned to use both slugs and buckshot in the same gun. I'm also guessing he doesn't have a rifled barrel (buckshot would not pattern worth a darn from a rifled barrel).

My point is not every hunter knows what ammunition his or her firearm is designed for and it is certainly possible that the split barrel had a sabot fired through it.

 

[ralphs]

When I was actively shooting 3-gun matches, a group of us fired slugs out of choked shotguns all the time. No particular problems other than the "wannabe experts" saying it could not be done.

We used Rem 870's with 20 inch rifle sighted barrels. Ground down the Rem rear sight and installed a receiver mounted ghost ring and used the rifle front sight. The barrels were gunsmithed for interchangeable chokes. The chokes used varied between modified and x-full (we were tyring to optimize between shot patterns and acceptable slug accuracy).

Generally speaking with either mod, full, or x-full chokes and using whatever slugs would work best, the worst accuracy that we ended up with was 10-12" at 100 yds. This is using the sights as described and a stable shooting position. Personally I probably fired 500-1,000 slugs and there were no problems and the recoil was not noticeably different than an improved cyl choke.

Rifle sights make a quite a difference vs a bead. Some brands of slugs did not shot well, so test various brands. At that time Rem Sluggers were the most consistent slugs, but things change so test all the slugs that you can find.