Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Shotguns for deer

Got invited to hunt in a metro Atlanta county that does not allow rifles. I've never hunted deer with a shotgun before, and was wondering what to shoot in my Beneli M1, and what choke. I am guessing the yardage will be 50-75 yards.
Any help is appreciated.
Don

Don
non rifled barrels generally shoot the foster style slugs with
imp cyl.
rifled barrels generally shoot the sabots best.

Jeff

Go put your IC choke in, and stop by Wally World and grab yourself some 12 GA Remington Sluggers. Nearly any choke will do, except really full chokes. Those might get you a bulge. You should be able to hold them on a pie-plate at 50 yards. That will be good enough. If the Sluggers don't work, try some Winchesters. Brenneke makes a really good one too. Be sure to get the ones that are meant for non-rifled barrels. Those types of slugs have fins that put the spin on the slug. The rifle-barrel slugs have no fins or straight fins and are spin stabilized by the rifling.
Forget sabots.

You may also want to buy a set of glue-on or clamp-on sights for the rib. I have a glue-on fiber-optic sight for one of my turkey barrels that gives me a better chance of hitting turkeys out past 40 yards.

So many people poo-poo slugs. I've always hunted with them from my archery stands. A standard shotgun, outfitted with slugs will double-to-triple your normal archer range, and if you connect with a slug, the damage will be awesome. Just don't try to compare a slug gun to a beanfield rifle. It's two different kinds of hunting.

Brenneke slugs with "fins" are designed especially for tight chokes (like we Germans use mostly in rifle/shotgun Combination guns). The "fins" are there for beeing compressed in the choke (thus lessening the friction AND shot well. There is absolutely no ballistic spin with Brenneke's, they are as "mass stabilized" like like Foster type.
Sabots too are fine in tighter chokes.
The thing is to find the right slug load that hits better than "plate size".
I do some pig hunting with slugs, all my barrels have to shot in 10 cm/3 shots @ 50 meters as my absolute maximum.
RD

My smooth bore with Improved cylinder choke shoots the lead Winchester slugs very well.

hunting1 that's what shoots in mine too.Ithaca Deerslayer
with IC

I agree with Roe Deer that the Brenneke style slugs are the way to go in a smoothbore. He's also right about the way the fins work. The slugs are cast much harder so they stay together and penetrate better. I've never been able to keep one inside of a deer. Plus they are accurate and reasonably priced compared to sabots.

There are some rifled choke tubes out there, some of them a bit longer than a stock choke tube that will put a spin on a sabot slug for you. You may want to try that if you want to be able to shoot out to 100 yards or a bit more. Test before you shoot though. Good luck.

I would just get some of the breneke slugs and call it good. I shot a standard 870 with IC choke with brenneke slugs whenever I hunted in the shotgun zone in michigan. Accuracy was decent out to 75-80 yards.

A little story about slug accuracy... Riley and Miss T took a State of AK hunter safety class about four years ago. One of the two clown instructors stated he could put five slugs on a paper plate at 50 yards... could do the same thing at 100 yards... EVEN 200 YARDS!

Then, before I could ask why he got such lousy accuracy at 100 yards when he could dup it at 200... he explained how critical it is to "Line up the beads just right!"
art

Classic!

I'll concur on the Brenneke slugs out of a smoothbore ... they've been the most accurate slugs in any gun I've tried 'em in.

Just plain ridiculous!

I'm not answering from a boatload of experience and testing but I get good results with my Rem Sluggers and a rifled choke (with rifle sights on the 18" barrel).

I hate slug hunting with a passion, would rather pull my finger nails out with red hot vise-grips. Did it for years in my youth then managed a deer killin' handgun and muzzleloader.
Shot 'em all, smoothbore and foster, rifled and sabot. Back in the day though smooth and foster was all we had, now its a cheeper way to go. Deer do die with 'em. Saw a lot of turkey shoots won with 870's and Sweet 16's thrownin' foster slugs. Guess with no other options Thats what I would still be using.

Shaman is right. Try them all before you say your gun will not shoot them. The more open the choke the better.

I can shoot a paper cup at 100 yds all day with my old Marlin 120 and Winchester slugs. I tried it at 200 hundred once for the heck of it. Couldn't even touch the plywood backboard.

I use slugs and buckshot. I use buckshot on man drives as does the guys I'm hunting with. I have slug gun I still hunt with in thick cover sometimes. I shoot winchester 00 3" unplated in my 870 12ga with a 26" tube with a full choke. I have taken a boat load of deer at 50-60 yds with this gun. I have taken a few out to 70 yds also but thats pushing it so I don't take many shots past 60 yds. I have not shot any 3 1/2" gun so I can't say they have more range. I like the unplated shot in my gun it patterns the best. At 50-60 yds it stops them in their tracks everytime. If your gun has a 28" or 30" tube a modified choke may work fine. I would get a couple of boxes of shells, different shot size and patteren the gun using the different chokes you have. I have a 870 and a 11-87 and they both like different loads when buck shot is concered. The 870 likes 00 and the 11-87 likes No. 1 buck.