Getting into slug hunting

hifiwasabi

hifiwasabi

Regular
Rating - 100%
122   0   1
Location
I live in a giant bucket.
I’ve been chasing my tail thinking about hunting deer closer to home lately which means I’d need to either shorten the spare barrel for my Auto 5 magnum and find one of those side saddle scope mounts that straddles the receiver, or I try to sell off the Auto 5 and spare barrel and purchase a more dedicated slug gun.

For awhile now I thought the Savage 220 was the bee’s knees since they offer it in left hand, but for roughly the same price you can get a Henry single shot 12 gauge with a rifled barrel that should take equally well to optics. I see Browning Silvers and Winchester SX4 rifled guns pop up pretty regularly, but are also pretty steep. Mossberg used to sell the 930 Slugster - not sure if it’s been discontinued or not; but they do show plenty of pump combinations with rifled barrels that don’t seem to interest me as much.

What sort of of range does a smooth bore slug gun lose its accuracy and effectiveness compared to what I’ve read about sabot slugs? If they’re fairly comparable, a dedicated turkey gun could likely do double duty.

I’ve also heard that sabots tend to build up in rifled barrels; what sort of cleaning solution is needed to dissolve the plastic?

Do Brenneke slugs behave any different to Foster slugs in relation to accuracy, range and terminal effectiveness? Enough to narrow the gap between rifled and smooth bores to a moot point?
 
I have tested a lot of slugs ....

The best accuracy I get out of smoothbore guns is with Federal Truball slugs. If you have the appropriate sighting system .... with those Federal Truballs a smoothbore becomes a 100 meter gun for hunting large game.

I tried several Brenneke slugs but they are not as accurate.

I also had two rifled slug guns ..... but I sold those for several reasons. Rifled barrels are finnicky .... and one has to try to find the sabot/ammo that that particular barrel likes. I spent a couple of hundred dollars in ammo and to try to find a sabot load that would work out of those two guns, and in the end accuracy was not much better than my smoothbores with the Federal Truball slugs.

And sabot slugs are really expensive.

In short ... and from my experience ... a smoothbore with Federal Truballs and the right sighting system is a 100 meter gun.
And a rifled shotgun is a 150 meter gun .... max 175 meters.

Some accuracy testing of smoothbore slugs in this thread:
https://www.canadiangunnutz.com/forum/threads/unofficial-12ga-slug-penetration-comparison.1635960/

Federal_TruBall_Slug_lowres.jpg



Rem870_Police_GhostRing_MonteCarlo_2021_lowres.jpg



870_Police_Ghost_Rings_100_Meters_TruBalls_4inchGroup.jpg
 
Last edited:
Savage 212 with accutips here.

hornady whitetail sabots were 9 MOA at 100.

Accutips are 2moa at 100 yards or better.
 
I guess one of my stumbling blocks with my Auto 5 is that mounting a scope is a cludge. There’s a wraparound mount that secures to the screws by the trigger guard at the bottom of the receiver, or you can have the receiver drilled and tapped for a standard rail of some sort if there’s enough material up there for screws to get purchase in. On top of potentially defacing a really nice shotgun, there’s no great guarantee that it’ll shoot any slug worth a damn after cutting the spare barrel down.

I’m certainly not opposed to a left hand Savage 220, and the accuracy reports and scopability are tempting. Like most people, I’m not made of money and I’m at the point where I have to sell something if I want to add something new to the collection - just trying to find out if the juice is worth the squeeze (I still really like my Browning).
 
If you are shooting at deer within shotgun range, do you really need to have a scope? Try some 2 3/4" Federal Truball slugs, you might be amazed at how accurate they are. Trust me, I would never try to talk anybody out of buying a new gun. Buying 6-7 different brands of ammo to find what works best is cheaper than a new gun or a new barrel.
 
hifiwasabi said:
With my vision, I tend not to do particularly well with irons or bead sights - a 1-4x is probably right on the money for less than 100m.
Click to expand...
In this case I would stay away from a setup where the scope is mounted on the receiver and the barrel can be removed.
I realized with my 870s ... that when I removed the barrel for cleaning .... point of impact had shifted. Some guns/barrels were worse than others ....

I now prefer a setup and where the sights or scope are mounted on the barrel .... or where the barrel cannot be removed like a bolt action ....
 
Last edited:
Why shorten the barrel? I have an Auto 5 with a shortened barrel that I take berry picking sometimes, it's easily a 50 yard Deer Gun which is as far as I practice with it.

I had a Brno combo gun that are available for less than $500, it was very accurate with Winchester Slugs at 100 yards. Unfortunately the rifle and shotgun barrels did not shoot to the same point of impact and a scope can be mounted on these. In other guns these Winchester Slugs have shot poorly for me.

I only buy Tru-Ball and Challenger Low Recoil Slugs now. The Challenger Magnum Slugs shoot very poorly in everything I've tried them in.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom