Home Forums Birds & Dogs Shotguns good duck/goose gun?

my wife's cousin came to hunt moose and he is an avid duck and goose hunter. he left me all his decoys and took me out with him for ducks one day. well long story short i am hooked. i have a rem 870 mag but it has a full choke and i am thinking of getting something else, like a double. imy sister has a rem 3200 she wants me to sell for her and i'm wondering if that would be a good one?
have wanted to waterfowl for years and just never got into it.

Just buy a barrel for your 870 with choke tubes.. That is what I did.. Doubles are fun, but many do not shoot both barrels to the point of aim, and then only with certain loads..

there you go! of course that wont get me another gun

Buy the 12 gauge, 3" shotgun of your choice with interchangeable tubes and find which tube shoots your prefered load the best. I currently own a Japanese era Browning Auto-5 Magnum with invector chokes, a Benelli M-2 with Crio Plus chokes, and a Browning Gold Stalker with Invector Plus chokes. All do a good job on ducks, geese, and swan; I hardly get to shoot the Stalker as my Dad likes it so much he is always using it.

Your 870 should be a fine waterfowl shotgun just as it is.

only thing i worry about with the 870 full is bulging the barrel with bigger shot. i have used 4's ok but would like to try 2's and 3's. this old 870 i got from a dear friend since passed and don't want to harm it.

Go big or go home.

Ah yes, I forget that lots of hunters use steel shot- full choke bulging probably is a consideration with this stuff. If you use bismuth or other soft non-lead shot then I stay with the recommendation for just using you 870.

BPS 10 ga.

I don't think you'll harm your 870 barrel with 2's or 3's or slugs, or anything else.


DMc

Remington has always said their fixed full choke single barrel shotguns built after 1960 where safe for standard steel loads up to #2 Your 870 will be perfectly safe as long as you stick with the Remington 3" 1 1/8oz 1550fps loads in #2 or 1 1/4oz 1375fps #2.

This...

Extra barrels for the 870 are cheap and readily available... and they work just fine...

My old 870 wingmaster had thousands of rounds of steel shot run through it. Most #2 steel. It now has a Remchoke barrel on it. I sold the old 30" full choke barrel for $100 so the new barrel cost me $65 I believe. Plus the cost of a few chokes.

i am shopping for a new barrel with remchokes.
baltz526, i lived in lapine in 1981-82
on sunrise bvld.

Forget a double for duck/goose hunting, especially if hunting out of a blind where space is an issue.

SBE

Right down the road a few miles.

If you can't find a tubed barrel that you can afford, you could buy a fixed modified choke barrel cheaply, and it would do all you ever wanted with steel shot.

Another advantage is that you don't have to worry about chokes shooting loose.

Rem SP10


DMc : )

I've had the 10ga auto, shell selection is pretty limited. They do kill birds way out there.

Shell selection... (Click here)

Filling the sky with 2 1/4 oz of shot, a shot-gunner should feel embarrassed by misses!

This is hilarious! Check out the hole size in the shot column bar.




DMc : )

PS: I have no idea where you'd find hulls for reloading?


.

That’s too big. Lol

I don’t like carrying a 11 lb shotgun around.
I’ll stick to my 7.3 lb gun thx.

That's why "we" get em to come to us!



I don't shoot a 10ga, but have, long ago when I was actively chasing geese. Chicken Fried Goose is the bomb, but don't let the word out, or there won't be anymore geese! I tend to go the opposite way as far as gauges go..., All the way down to .410's which I love but would never chase ducks with one. Here's a couple of my quacker guns.




DMc

Love the blind.
One of the places I waterfowl Hunt I have to walk a half mile in that’s why I don’t like carrying heavy objects but what we do is strap my buddy’s canoe to my deer cart and roll everything inside the canoe.
Makes for a much easier hike.

We have the Brazos River close by. Would take our canoes to the tail race at Possum Kingdom Lake to launch. (Well aware of portaging loaded canoes.) We'd paddle (float) 16 miles downriver to a Boy Scout ranch where one of us would park our car for the trip out. I never went further downstream, but many did float the river all the way to Waco, TX. Beautiful trip and the fishing & camping were always terrific. On a few occasions we rescued tubers that were caught in unexpected heavy water releases from the dam.

If you notice the aluminum poles behind the duck blind, this allowed the floating blind to rise and settle as water levels changed. The board on the front of the blind, facing the camera was for a 2hp outboard motor. We could disconnect the blind and motor it across the pond to accommodate for favorable winds to where other poles had been set. That's a ladder on the left side of the blind that folds down into the water for ease of access. A lot of ducks died there.

I was in Reno, NV once shooting craps. A Chinese guy was beside me. We started talking and come to find out, he owned a Chinese restaurant in Arlington, TX. Dang! He was practically my neighbor. Never paid for a meal there as long as I brought him ducks! He did love duck, and I'm sure several of his customers did too.


DMc : )

A full choke and steel shot isn't a good mix, and not just for the bulging danger. If you've been a rifle shooter all your life, wingshooting may prove to be a challenge. So give yourself every advantage with an open choke. Out to 30 yards or so, decoying range, an IC choke and steel shot will work fine. And an 870 is as good a platform as any, no need to do anything other than get a barrel for choke tubes.

Oh yeah, and do lots of practise at the skeet range.

A barrel for the 870. Or if your just wanting a new gun there are many out that are good for fowling. I use an old SBE but Beretta makes a great gas gun that helps with recoil of magnum loads as does Browning and others. Im partial to benelli and Beretta because they fit me and the quality is top notch. I'm not a fan of the new A5 nor the maxis but it's because the shape and pitch of the pistol grip and stock. The SX3 SX4 are nice and reliable.