I'm just ruminating here.

There are a lot of bears near my house. When the guy next door cuts his corn, from the outside in - up to 22 have been known to run out during the last swath. But, sometimes they want fruit and I've had to shoot a few big black bears in my orchard up close and personal - and living as I do with houses nearby, when I know they are in the trees, I go out with a shotgun. I yell at them, and if they take off like a scalded cat - they live, if they give me any attitude at all - they die.

Since a 12 gauge slug is bigger than a .700 caliber rifle to begin with - why do they even bother to design them to expand? With a hole in an animal that is already as big as most big bore rifles make when they shoot expanding bullets - why not just design the slugs to penetrate as deeply as possible and come out of the barrel with as much speed as a shotgun can produce?

The more I think about this one - the more I wonder.

How does the Fish & Game department feel about this?

These are what you are looking for; http://www.dixieslugs.com/

These are hard cast .730 diameter 730 grain 12 guage slugs and they are quite impressive.......
They are designed to be shot in .730 diameter rifled barrels and are designed for maximum penetration used for big game such as Large Boar and Large Bear They do not mushroom..........

Ruminating back at ya........

Maybe hard cast isn't good for a choked barrel? Maybe hard cast in a Forster pattern is too brittle? Maybe if you make it a solid the slug weighs too much? Maybe expansion is a byproduct and not an intent.

After all that ruminating it occurs that I've never shot anything with a slug of any gauge that required two shots...so I don't share your concern. I've only used Forster pattern slugs but suspect that if you want a non expanding projectile you might consider one of the sabot loads if your barrel is rifled, or a Brenneke slug if not and you wish for something less likely to look like an ashtray after the fact. 'Course the sabots are of smaller diameter so you may want some expansion to bring them up to full .700 Nitro diameter or better. They are lighter too. 'Tis a conundrum.

They are made to look like they'll expand because they sell better that way. I've killed a number of deer over the years with slugs and like Digital Dan, never needed more than one. Most of them have been plain old Forster style. Flirted around in the mid 70's with some of the wasp-waisted sabot loads when S&W was marketing them. They seemed to tumble and do a lot of damage, but I never recovered one. They don't need to expand any more than .44 or .45 bullets need to.

As for the sabots, the military used to use rifled barrel 105mm cannon firing APDS-T. Whe they went to the 120mm, it is a smoothbore using APFSDS-T. Rifling degaded the accuracy so they fin stabilized the projectile. Shotgun sabots that are wasp waisted stabilize by shape and rifling really doesn't help them much if at all.

I always buy ample bear tags - plus in B.C., if a bear shows any aggression - popping it is ok. Within a mile, at least a dozen are probably taken every year. The farmers don't like them much.

For what I do - the Remington "Buckhammer" looks interesting.
None of my shotguns has rifled barrels - as I have no need for that, living here.

P.S. I thought I'd add, the last +7 ft bear I shot (now a rug in my basement) stood up and looked in the back door at my wife, with two large snarling dogs beside her, looking through the glass, that were going ballistic, with not a concern in the world, all the while, munching my daughter's bicycle helmets and the bird feeder one of them had made, that were laying on the dog house roof, beside our back door. Not every kid can claim to having a helmet with bear tooth marks in it. The neighbors created that menace, by leaving bins of dropped apples on their porch - and then (thinking it was "cute") they would watch the bear as it got bigger and less fearful, year after year, as it ate the provided apples on their porch as they watched it through their sliding glass window. They had no children. Every year, this big boar grew more fearless. I have three little girls that walk a 1/2 mile down a country road early in the morning in order to catch their school bus - I didn't think such a bear was "cute" at all.

What do you think of the Dixie Slugs?

I've never heard of them, I don't know if they are available in Canada. What do you know about them?

Based on the ad - they seem to be exactly what I'm looking for!

Now, if I can only find them in Canada...

Careful. These Dixie slugs are designed to be fired in rifled barrels. They are obviously not to be fired in choked barrels.

The old Foster type slugs are designed to be fired from choked barrels. They are made of soft lead to easily swage down when passing through the choke restriction. That is also the reason for the "rifling" - to easily pass through choke restriction. The rifling is not to make them spin. They do not need to be spin-stabilized in order to fly nose forward. They stabilize in flight much the same way as a badminton shuttlecock.

If you don't want to get a rifled shotgun barrel, stick with the Foster type rifled slugs. If you want to shoot the Dixie slugs, get a rifled barrel for your shotgun, or a different gun with a rifled barrel. A company in Michigan named Hastings makes aftermarket rifled barrels for many shotguns. A Hastings barrel would be less costly than buying a new gun. Here is a link to their website: http://www.hastingsbarrels.com/barrels.html
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