Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Shotgun rifled / slug opinions

"Accuracy is surprisingly good, on average, and it's about as finicky to feed as a fat kid at a buffet...."



*LOL*

Grice Gun Shop (in PA) did a run of them a couple years back in 35 Remington. That particular model (they may very well have done some others) was a black synthetic stock carbine. I convinced a pard that he HAD to have one. Well, he obliged and now shuns his 700's for the 35 Remington when hunting deer and bear in WI and MN.

That is a funny quote VAnimrod...had me laughing good this morning. One in a carbine sounds even better.

Minnesota is divided roughly in half, North half rifle, South half shotgun. I live right on the line and hunt both sides. My son and I have been using Rem 870 20 ga for 12 years now, one a Wingmaster LW and one an Express Youth. Walmart had a clearance sale on Remington smoothbore slug barrels w/rifle sights - $50.00 ea - got one for each shotgun. We've used the cheapest Federal rifled slugs available with very good results.

Not intended as a long range weapon at all, but within it's effective range, very deadly. I've shot both 12 and 20 ga and believe the 12 ga to have much more recoil. I'm no expert but have been told that the ballistics for the 20 ga are actually better bacause mostly due to the excessively heavy slug weight of the 12 ga. Again no ballistic expert, but my personal experience has been very good.

Never used scopes on either, so I can't advise you on them, other than to say, be sure to get one made for a shotgun. The shock of a shotgun as with a muzzleloader is very different and harder on scopes that a rifle.

IMHO
Dave

I would handload 20 ga slugs if someone would supply adequate loading data.

You can buy the collets, bullets and Hodgdon 'Longshot' would be the go to powder. There has never been much demand for slug loading data but with the price of saboted slugs at $13.00 plus per box that needs to change.

Doc

VANimrod did very well recommending a 7600 to me in 35 Whelen several years ago. I truly love it. If you are a handloader like me, you can take a 35 Whelen and knock it back a few percent and end up with the equivalent of a hot 35 Rem. In doing so, I now have an awesome deer rifle with a lot of potential for down the road. It is much easier and safer to go that route than to start with a 35 Rem and try to work up.

It was very interesting to get the feedback about the 7600. Your comment about 35 Whelen is appreciated. Certainly creates a lot of options.

Pretty much my deal, except I bought another M500 combo gun (synthetic handles) on sale a few years back, that came with a cantilevered-mount, rifled barrel. Now I have a pair of M500s and can use the scoped deer barrel on whichever one I want to.

That barrel shoots 12ga Lightfield sabots very well. They are much cheaper than any of the premium loads and kill stuff fairly dead. Put an old 1.5x4X shotgun scope on it and the Lightfields will shoot into 2" at 100 yards.

We've had the same slug vs rifle haggle here in PA. The game commission hired an outfit to study the stats and found that shotgun slugs were involved in more incidents than rifle bullets. NY recently dropped its "shotgun only" requirement in most of the counties that border northern PA. No increase in accidents that I'm aware of.

Personally, I'd prefer a 12ga slug over a 20ga slug just for the increased "energy" and wound channel.

My slug gun is an Ithaca 37, rifled barrel with 1-4 leupold mounted on the receiver. I shoot 2 3/4 inch lightfield hybrids-very accurate. I really like the set up.
I prefer a scope mounted to receiver. If the gun is dedicated to deer, I would mount to the receiver, if yu plan on using it as multi purpose, cantilever is definately theway to go.

I tried everything I could in my Mossy 500 when I got the rifled barrel. My advice is to start cheap and work up. The orthodoxy on this is that rifled slugs like the Slugger won't do as well in a rifled barrel as slugs that were meant for rifled barrels, but you don't know until you try. I found Brenneke 2.75 slugs built for rifled barrels worked the best in mine, and second best were Remington 3" copper solids. That was 1996, and a few years after that I got land in Kentucky and my freezer is always full before OH Shotgun season starts. I have not revisited the problem since.

Some would say that given the prospect of having to toss slugs at the deer for the rest of my life, I left the state of my birth and spent my family's wealth so I would not have to fire another slug gun. This belies the reality: I did all this and made my move to KY so that I could fill my freezer three weeks earlier than my Ohio Buckeye neighbors and therefore be much warmer in my stand. I also did it so that I could hunt on Sundays--something that was still screwed up when I left. Either way you look at it, I still consider it a bargain.

Doctor Encore,

Check out this link:

http://gardnerscache.com/20ga_slug_reload_kit_100pcs_.html

I bought 25 of his 525 12ga slugs and loaded them at 1600 fps in AA hulls with Blue Dot and Win Red Wads. They printed 3" groups at 100 from my full rifled hasting BBL. Cheap, easy to load, and should pack a heck of a punch down range.

The 350 grners in the 20ga at 1450-1500 fps oughta pack a punch on anything out to 150 yards.

For 100 loads @ only $31.50(Slugs, Hulls, and Wads), it's hard to beat that price!

Good Luck

Reloader

Now, if we could get dies, bullets, matching sabots, load data, ect.....to load brass hulls. It'd almost be fun to screw around with a 20 gauge rifle.

http://www.gunshopfinder.com/savage/savage210F.asp

Ive got one of these and its sure effective with SABOT SLUGS

http://www.lightfieldslugs.com/lightfield/ecatalog/index.cfm?pageid=105&id=2

you can also load and cast your own
http://www.midsouthshooterssupply.com/item.asp?sku=000152654112

If I had the option of a rifle instead of a slug gun, it would be a no-brainer to go for the rifle instead- much more accurate and a lot less recoil. But that's not what you asked.

Shaman's advice & experience would mirror my own. I went through several mediocre slug guns and setups before my current (and hopefully last). I started with a smoothbore and added a saddle mount with a scope. Later used a screw-in rifled choke and got a little better accuracy. Finally bought the cantilever Remington fully-rifled barrel and shot well over $200 worth of slugs off of sandbags looking for what my barrel liked.

Each barrel is a law unto itself (the same as a rifle), but mine LOVES the Remington Buckhammer and will cloverleaf them at 100 yards! Never found any other combo or load that comes close- 3" maybe, but not cloverleafs. I suggested to a friend to try them and he and a friend of his had great results too.

Get a scope with a lot of eye relief, I'd suggest Leupold, but I used a 1.5-6X Burris Signature for years before switching to Leupold too.

It is time for me to bring this to a close. The feedback was very helpful. The major preference shown here is to stay with a rifle unless regulations force a change. Based on everything posted that makes a lot of sense.

I will say one major learning for me was about the high price of slugs.

I am going to look for a 20 gauge semi, but a standard barrel with chokes. Thanks again. Definately worth asking the question of those who have the subject background.

Here in PA there are rifle zones and shotgun zones. Funny rule is that you can not use a semiauto shotgun in a rifle zone for deer. So I have a rifled barrel Bennelli Super Back Eagle with a Leoupold VXIII 3X9 for shotgun zones and a rifled barrel Browning A-Bolt with a Leoupold VXII 2X7 for the rifle zones. I load the Bennelli with 385 grain Winchester Partition Gold Supreme's and the Browning with Lightfield Hybred EXP's which are all lead and 546 grains.

Never had anything I hit walk away from either of them. Both accurate out beyond 150 yards at the range but never had to shoot more than 110 yards at anything.

ROMAC, those are nice rigs you have. I haven't seen a Browning A-bolt in a while. Would be nice if they made those again. Thanks for posting your pics.

Yeah, that Browning is a tackdriver. I got it when Browning discontinued manufacturing them and dumped all their inventory at once to their major dealers. I looked up the reciept and saw that I paid $715 for it new with the scope and rings installed. I think my dealer had 10 synthetic and 10 walnut. At the time they were discounted to $450 for synthetic and $500 for wood. I wish I had bought a couple of them.

I've seen that they are now sky high dollars on the internet if you can find one.

I live in Iowa and you can only use shotgun here for the most part(not getting into the weird details). Anywho, I would love to get a bolt-action sluggun. I have been looking on the auction sites and those A-Bolts are really expensive IMO. Maybe I'll see one at the Tulsa gun show this fall for a better price.

DH-

For the price they're getting for the used ones, you can nearly get a Benelli SBE with a rifled tube. Money much better spent IMO.