# Slugs....



## MLAROSA (May 20, 2004)

Is Brenneke only making Sabot slugs this year?

That is the only thing I seem to be able to find in the stores this year. If anyone has any idea where I can purchase slugs for a smoothbore barrel I woiuld greatly appreciate it.

I need the slugs in both 20 and 12 guage. I suppose reccommendations on other slug options would be appreciated too.

Mike


----------



## Shortdrift (Apr 5, 2004)

K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Bass Pro, Dicks. All these places carry Foster slugs for the smoothbore.


----------



## DaleM (Apr 5, 2004)

Check Meijer. also buckeye outdoors, and vances will fix you up.


----------



## littleking (Jun 25, 2005)

Brenneke just didnt seem to shoot right out of my slug barrel for some reason, the only thing that shot GREAT was the partition golds and the copper solids, im shooting a H&R ultra slug hunter... sweet gun, just sucks that i have to shoot expensive slugs... oh well take the good with the bad, picked the darn gun up for $125 with scope so i cant complain


----------



## deerslayer54 (Oct 27, 2005)

I have had great luck with remington copper solids, I shoot a rifled slug barrel. When I was shooting a smoth bore I used remington sluggers and they worked fine, not as accurate as the copper solids with the rifled barrel but they got the job done.


----------



## crankus_maximus (Apr 14, 2004)

My best luck was with the Winchester foster slugs. Best all-around accuracy I could get in a smoothbore. Now I shoot sabots.


----------



## lg_mouth (Jun 7, 2004)

...it always entertains me to hear some hunters complain about paying $10-$15 for a box of 5 sabots, but while bowhunting, have no problem paying $30-$40 for 3 broadheads. Just makes me laugh sometimes how people justify one thing and not the other.

Anyway, smoothbore I have always had the best luck with Winchester Super X slugs. Rifled, the original Winchester BRI Sabots. Mossberg 500 and 695 are my 2 slug guns.

Anyone try those new Hornady slugs yet?

Lg_mouth

Shoot by sight, walk by Faith


----------



## bkr43050 (Apr 5, 2004)

lg_mouth said:


> ...it always entertains me to hear some hunters complain about paying $10-$15 for a box of 5 sabots, but while bowhunting, have no problem paying $30-$40 for 3 broadheads. Just makes me laugh sometimes how people justify one thing and not the other.


 I think part of the difference is that the broadhead are reusable where the slugs are not. One can shoot up a chunk of change just target practicing. My broadheads last me for years at times when properly maintained.

I have a Mossberg 500 20 guage for my boy but I am still working on sighting it in. I started with the lower priced slugs in hopes that they are the ticket. I have some Remington sluggers and only got to put 5 through it last night before darkness started taking its toll. So far I have not tried to go out very far but they I have not yet seen anything to scare me away from them. I will have to do some experimenting with them though at some point.


----------



## bkr43050 (Apr 5, 2004)

My deer gun is a Remington 1100 smooth bore. I shoot plain old Remingtons or Federals in that gun and it shoots them like a dream. From 100 yards in I have all the confidence in that gun and slug performing for me.


----------



## bigcat46 (Dec 15, 2004)

I shoot Lightfields through my rifled bore 870, they shoot great.


----------



## dblbrldave (Apr 16, 2004)

Check out the manufacturer websites. They give the ballistic information for there slugs, federal,winchester, and brenneke do. They fps, force in ft lbs, and drop out to 125yds. very interesting information available before you even start to purchase slugs.


----------



## billybob7059 (Mar 27, 2005)

I love the remington soild copper sabots. They shoot great in my mossberg 695 I think it is.


----------



## saugeyeslayer (Jul 6, 2004)

i use a mossberg 9200 12 gauge (old relaible) with partition gold 3"....those deer drop like a ton of bricks...if i can hit em' lol. yeah theyre extremely powerful. my small framed- self dosent like all the wear and tear on my poor little shoulder. i missed a decent 8 point during the youth hunt. actually i shaved his belly for him. one tiny spot of blood and some white hair not to mention the big hole in the ground below him. those meigs county bucks sure are tricky. oh well theyres always OPENING DAY- too bad bexley dosent let school out for it.


----------



## Lundy (Apr 5, 2004)

My wife works for the superintendent of Bexley City Schools. I'll see if she can persuade him to close school for the opening day of gun season for you.  

I didn't know any Bexley residents hunted, are you a recent transplant?


----------



## Lewis (Apr 5, 2004)

Here is one I dug up from the OGF archives.
Its an excellent article on slugs and slug guns.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Although it does not discuss projectile energy,here is a great article on slug shooting systems..


Slug shotguns and slug ammunition have changed dramatically in the past few years. When I first began hunting white-tailed deer with 12-gauge shotgun slugs over 30 years ago, the best - in fact, the only - choice was a Foster-type "rifled" slug in a smoothbore Improved Cylinder barrel with open-notch sights. Fifty yards was a sensible shot. If you tried to push it much past 70 yards, you'd be just as well off throwing rocks.

Today there are a wide variety of new slug designs, bunches of new guns and new barrel designs in which to shoot them, and in many deer-hunting areas you are as likely to see a whitetail hunter carrying a factory-made synthetic-stock bolt-action slug gun with a high-magnification variable scope sight as you are to see a hunter armed with a traditional open-sight lever-action .30-30 deer rifle.

The best of today's slugs and slug guns can deliver accuracy as good out to 100 yards, 150 yards and even beyond, as can many ordinary production-grade rifles. And when you turn to the question of projectile energy, just note this: The retained energy of one of Remington's current Premier Copper Solid 1-ounce sabot slugs at 100 yards is 1,364 ft/lbs. The retained energy of a traditional lever-action's 170-grain soft-nose .30-30 bullet at the same distance is actually 9 ft/lbs less!



At the same time, there are thousands - even tens of thousands - of long-term deer hunters still using their favorite do-everything shotguns with smoothbore barrels - either with or without "rifle" sights - to harvest deer with the same Foster-type slugs used a generation ago. The fact is, today's slug-gun hunter has nearly as many different options in terms of types of guns and types of slug ammunition appropriate for different ranges and hunting circumstances as high-power-rifle hunters do. This is a new thing, and also a good thing, since there are many states and intra-state hunting zones in this country where a slug gun is the only deer-hunting firearm allowed by law.


AMMUNITION AND BARRELS MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE
At present, there are basically two types of slug ammunition available on the market: sabot-type and non-sabot (with numerous variations within each type). Sabot-type slug ammo designs all utilize some type of relatively soft non-metallic sleeve material (usually polymer) that surrounds a smaller diameter bullet projectile. Bullet configurations and sabot designs vary widely by manufacturers and their types of loads, but all sabot ammo is based on the principle that the bullet "sheds" the enclosing sabot in flight (through wind resistance or the centrifugal force of spin imparted by rifling) or on impact. Non-sabot ammo utilizes a bore-diameter projectile.

There are three different types of shotgun barrels through which slugs can be fired: traditional smoothbore (any choke, with or without rifle-type sights); smoothbore with a screw-in rifled choke tube; or full-length rifled. In terms of ammo performance, it's the barrel that counts. The type of shotgun action - auto, pump, bolt or break-open - is not really significant. Nevertheless, the situation is not mix-and-match. For satisfactory performance, the type of slug ammunition you use needs to be matched to the type of barrel you are using.

A smooth-bore slug barrel does not spin its projectile, so its range is limited. A smoothbore barrel with a screw-in rifled choke is somewhat better because it will impart at least some stabilizing spin to a departing solid or sabot-design slug, and a full-length-rifled barrel is best (which is why high-power rifles are not smoothbore). In general terms, sabots are intended to be spun. The faster they spin, the better they work, the more stable the flight of the projectile they enclose and the more consistently they separate from the bullet. So, the rule of thumb is essentially this: All types of slug ammo, sabot and non-sabot, provide their best accuracy and the longest effective range when fired in a full-rifle barrel. A smoothbore barrel with rifled choke tube will be somewhat less accurate, and a pure smoothbore offers the least accuracy. You can safely shoot all types of slugs in all types of barrels, but if you use premium-grade sabot ammo in a smoothbore, you're wasting your money, and will likely get less accuracy than with a conventional old Foster-type soft lead slug, since the sabot won't properly separate from the bullet and it actually de-stabilizes the trajectory more than a solid-type load.

On the other hand, if you shoot an old-fashioned Foster lead slug through a rifled barrel, you'll get much more accuracy with it than through a smoothbore. Rifling does work, after all.

So does this mean you should immediately junk the smoothbore deer-slug barrel you've been using for years and run right out and buy a new full-rifle barrel or entirely new slug gun? Not necessarily. It depends on what you really need for your particular hunting circumstances. The choice you make is up to you.



DECISIONS, DECISIONS: WHAT DO YOU NEED IN A SLUG GUN?
How should you choose a shotgun for deer hunting? What type of action is best? What gauge? Is a rifled-bore barrel with rifle sights or a scope really necessary, or will a regular shot barrel be sufficient? Only you can answer these questions.

Actually, traditional smoothbore slug guns have an undeservedly bad reputation. The thing most often heard is that smoothbore slug guns aren't very accurate, that they wound and cripple too many deer. In fact, no state or federal wildlife agency has ever developed any statistics that show that slug guns are either more or less effective than any other type of firearm when it comes to harvesting deer. What does happen, however, is that a lot of hunters using shotgun deer slugs do not use them correctly, and they don't get the kind of results from them that they'd like.

Many skilled shotgun shooters have a tendency to shoot slugs the same way they shoot shotshells - they just point and slap the trigger. That works fine if you're throwing out a cloud of pellets that can cover a 30-inch target circle by the time they're 30 yards from the muzzle. But it doesn't work for a slug, which is a single projectile that has to be fired with the same careful aim you'd use with a rifle.

Ordinary shotgun barrels don't have sights; most just have a single bead to help in point-shooting flying birds. A single bead isn't much help when trying to carefully aim at the chest of a deer that's standing 50 yards away. One of the main reasons that slug guns have a bad reputation is that too many shotgun shooters just take their ordinary shotguns and load slugs in them and go out into the field and try to point-shoot a deer with a slug the same way they do a flying pheasant with a shotshell. They miss, or they wound. They seldom make clean kills.


YOU'VE GOT TO KNOW YOUR LIMITATIONS
The other side of the coin regarding slug guns' bad reputation is that when many shotgun shooters do get a slug barrel with rifle-type front and rear sights, put it on their shotgun, charge it up with new high-tech sabot loads, and maybe mount a scope, they start acting like they have turned that shotgun into a real rifle, and start trying to make the same shots they would try if they had a .30-06 in their hands. It just doesn't work that way. A slug gun is still a shotgun, and it's still firing ammo with a muzzle velocity of less than 2,000 feet per second. It still has a limited range compared to any high-power rifle, and it must be used within its limitations. Traditional slug guns get misused a lot: by hunters who try to shoot them like they were firing shotshells in a shotgun and by hunters who try to shoot them like they were firing a high-power centerfire rifle.

A slug gun is neither a shotgun nor a rifle; it is what it is - a slug gun. If you use it the way it's designed to be used, it makes a fine deer-hunting tool. Regardless of gauge or specific ammo design, a smoothbore slug gun is effectively a 50-yard arm. Beyond that range, the non-gyroscopic smoothbore projectile destabilizes rapidly and cannot be relied on to fly true. At 50 yards, however, a good Foster-type slug gun with solid-form projectiles will print 3-inch three-shot groups on a target. A new full-rifle barrel firing high-velocity sabot slugs will reliably print the same groups twice as far. How much range do you need? You decide.

Whatever slug gun system you choose, the most important thing you should do is take the gun and the slugs to a shooting range and sit down at a bench rest and actually shoot the slugs at a target to see where they're going. This is particularly important if the barrel you are using does not have rifle-type sights. With the proper preparation and some time at the range, you can get great performance out of a slug gun system.


----------



## Onion (Apr 10, 2004)

In my Remington 870 - 

Smoothbore - Brenneke KOs
Rifled - Remington Core Lokt Ultra Bonded Sabot Slugs

In the past I have used Buckhammers, sluggers and lightfields.


----------



## beatsworkin (Apr 12, 2004)

Mlarosa- Gander Mtn. in Reynoldsburg had 15 pack winchester foster slugs for just under 6 bucks last week. Not sure if they had that pack in 20 gauge but they did have single boxes in 20.

BW


----------



## saugeyeslayer (Jul 6, 2004)

oh, theres a few sportsman in bexley, but i think our family may be one of the only practicing outdoors regularly here(sadly). Pat Britt is also a close family friend and hes the only other avid hunter/fisherman i know of in bexley. i tell you what, you'd be suprised on the amount of monsters wondering within miles of bexley highschool.too bad theres a law against huntin them here...(in bexley). mabye you could sway the head hauncho into allowing a day off, and legal permission to hunt those brutes...lol mabye thats somthing i should confront the mayor with. oh well. dream on i guess.  
P.S. i have been living here my whole life!


----------

