Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Smooth or Rifled barrels for shotgun only areas?

Idaho doesn't have any shotgun only areas that I know of. In some more populated areas, there are some 'short range weapons' areas. Short range includes shotguns of any kind, bows, ML's, and handguns.

Either in Michigan. Rifled with sabot slugs more accurate and effective at a bit longer range. Both are fine at short range. Currently shotgun slug barrels are in good supply at LGS because of the advent of legal use of straight wall pistol cartridges in rifles. Popularity of .44 mag and rifled shotgun barrels has waned with the arrival of .450 Bushmaster and .350 Legend chambered rifles/carbines. A LGS operator up in the Thumb convince Ruger to chamber Ruger American rifles in .450 bushmaster and they've sold like hotcakes.

Main reason I think is superiority of stock rifle triggers over unaltered shotgun triggers. I have a rifled slug barrel for my duck hunting pump gun but the 8-9+lb trigger is detrimental to accurate shooting.

With the accuracy and extended range of a rifled barrel it's hard to see why anyone would want to hunt with a smooth barrel.

Maybe the added accuracy and or range not required by some.

Know lots of folks that think 100 yards is far and shooting offhand over 50 to be some superhuman feat.

Foster slugs are a bit cheaper to shoot LOL and if one likes to blast their rig in the offseason.....

Aagaardsporter accurately summarized the Michigan situation.

Prior to 450 Bushmaster legalization about 3-4 years ago, shotgun only meant lobbing footballs. Then saboted slugs in rifled barrels changed the game dramatically, increasing distance and accuracy out to legit 200 yards.

Started shotgun hunting in Michigan before going out to Iowa, where rifled barrels and saboted slugs were an expensive way of shooting at running deer. After blowing through alot of $$$ ammo (basically $4/trigger pull), changed up my game and went to smoothbore with rifled slugs. Saved me well over $100 in ammo annually.

All my rifled shotgun barrels have cantilever scope mounts, allowing those shotguns double-duty as bird guns as well. My absolute favorite rig is a Beretta 390 12-ga with Hastings Paradox barrel and Eotech XPS 2 red dot. Head & neck shots out to 100 yards all day long.

I hunted for a lot of years with an Ithaca M37 with a 26 inch vent rib barrel and fixed IC choke. It had a red fiber optic front bar and a middle brass bead. That thing could shoot Remington and Federal foster slugs such that I could break coke bottles with it at 75 yards. Killed a lot of deer with it. I still hunt with an M37 Featherlight with a rifled barrel and and factory fiber optic sights. I've pretty much shot up my hourglass shaped sabot slugs. I bought some Hornady sabot slugs. Going to see how they do.

I never believed in a dual purpose shotgun
High comb stocks, scopes and trigger jobs.
Set up for specific task and left that way.

A lot of hunters only have one trusty shotgun and it's a smoothbore. Here in Virginia, we still have buckshot only areas, so they need a gun that will hunt squirrels, rabbits, and deer with buckshot or slugs.

Not too long ago, one of the most coveted quota hunts in Virginia that produced really, really nice bucks was a hunt on the Radford Army Ammunition Plant, and that was buckshot only. Now it's slugs only.

I have owned Ithaca 37 Deerslayers in both rifled and smoothbore barrels. They were both equally accurate with the right slugs.

I have found that slug guns tend to be individually picky about ammo. One Rem 870 might like Sluggers while another of the same likes WInchester...For a new slug gun, I buy a box of several different brands and types

Local chain store got Sluggers.
I have a smoothbore Benelli clone.
If not raining try the 2 3/4" tomorrow.
Did not buy the rig to be a hunting slug gun, but hey, if it does a good job........sweet!

Trigger is pretty lousy, but I'm gonna be doing a break in w shot shells too. So blaze through 100 and then see how she does w Big Green's punkin balls.

My pref has always been Winchesters, but nobody has any right now.

I used a smooth bore double barrel 20 gauge. We envied the guys using rifled shotguns but it wasn't enough for many to spend the money on a rifled barreled gun.

kwg