Home Forums Birds & Dogs Shotguns Which Slugs question

Guys, I have a Mossberg 500 with the factory rifled slug barrel. My question, can I use all different slug designs or am I limited to saboted slugs ONLY? First would any design like the Breneke slug go thru the rifled barrel safely? Accurate? I know it is designed for the saboted slugs, just wondering, since I have a drawer full of the breneke slugs. Wallace in Ga

Brenneke's generally say on the box that they arre for rifled barrels. I use them and Foster slugs, usually WW Super-X or Federal Tru-Ball also. The only downside to the foster type slugs is you haveto clean the plastic out of the bore every 10 rounds or so.

Try them and see since you have a whole drawer full

Sabots in fully rifled barrels.

Any slug is safe to shoot in a rifled barrel, including Brenneke's. You will find that conventional, full bore slugs will lead the barrel very quickly.

In my experience the Brenneke KO style slugs shoot very well out of rifled barrels. The old style that had the slug attached to wads actually seemed to clean the barrel when shot, the new style with the plastic post/wad will leave plastic in your barrel sometimes. That said either works just fine. I have shot some foster style slugs and they really lead up the barrel fast so I don't use them.

You can safely shoot #8 shot Winchester AA out of a fully rifled barrel.

Safely doesn't mean it is a good idea or effective. Sabots in rifled slug barrels are best. Yes, some Brenneke slugs are OK, but if you want to get longer range performance, try the faster, lighter sabots that have been coming out. This is one of the reasons the 20ga sabot and slug gun has been so popular recently.

I have had great personal success with Winchester 12ga Gold Partition moving at around 1850fps.

Rifled barrels are designed for saboted slugs, I tried all the saboted slugs available to find the one that shot best in my gun. Most rifled barrels have one saboted slug that shoot better than others, in my case it was Federal with the Hydra-shok slug.

Plastic from Fosters. Not likely

Plastic from Fosters. Not likely

Brenneke slugs are not like fosters, they have the wads connected to the lead and the newest versions have plastic wads.

Several iterations of Brenneke slugs have had attached plastic wads for decades. Remington "Slugger" rifled slugs have had a hard plastic wad under the slug for as far back as I can remember. I've shot a bunch of both and they both lead up barrels.

My POS Mossberg 835 rifled bbl had a 3.5" chamber and wouldnt shoot any sabot worth a damn, back when that gun/ model first came out.

Bore was rough and that w the 3.5" chamber and 2 3/4 or 3" slugs was a horrible mix.

Ended up polishing the bore some and using 3" ww fosters.
Shot the best

Still had to clean it after 10 shots or so, then foul one or two and be back at it

Shot 3 deer over a couple yrs. 165, 90 and 15 yards.
Switched to an 870 w rifled bore and WW High Impact Supreme sabots. Better looking, feeling and shooting system.

Lightfield didn't make 3.5" slugs when I had my 835.