Semi-automatics, revolvers, long guns... ask questions and offer tips on safe, accurate shooting here.
 #81926  by bmel17
 
nope, I use my 18" with slugs when I shotgun for deer.

I'm getting setup for next season with a bear hunt too! But I'll go rifle for that!!
 #81936  by bmel17
 
Lascivious1 wrote:Aww Damn! i need a rifle too?
up in PA you can!
 #81998  by WPCatfish
 
Lascivious1 wrote:Aww Damn! i need a rifle too?

Several rifles would be preferable...
 #82047  by cslade454
 
My 11-87 smooth bore deer barrel with a rem choke is 21 inches. When I was young there where no rifled deer barrels so I had to no choice. It works just fine. I have an 870 home defense with an 18 cylinder bore and ghost ring sights. I only shot slugs at 100 yards with it once but it did just fine also. Before I was old enough to buy my own shotgun I had to use my Uncles single shot fixed choke one. There are four deer that can attest to how well it worked.
 #82048  by bmel17
 
cslade454 wrote:My 11-87 smooth bore deer barrel with a rem choke is 21 inches. When I was young there where no rifled deer barrels so I had to no choice. It works just fine. I have an 870 home defense with an 18 cylinder bore and ghost ring sights. I only shot slugs at 100 yards with it once but it did just fine also. Before I was old enough to buy my own shotgun I had to use my Uncles single shot fixed choke one. There are four deer that can attest to how well it worked.
I still wouldn't shoot rifled slugs through a smooth bore. Before rifled barrels, slugs weren't rifled either. It is ok if you get non-rifled slugs.
 #82055  by myopicvisionary
 
"Rifled" slugs have been around forever and millions of them have gone through smoothbores around the planet. My 1955 vintage High Standard "Riot-King" police shotgun is amazingly accurate with Brenneke MP slugs.
 #82057  by bmel17
 
Good to know. I never took a chance and erred on the side of caution.
 #82059  by myopicvisionary
 
The term "rifled" slug needs to be taken with a grain of salt. The grooves around the sides of the slug are primarily there to provide a "squish" area should the slug have to pass through a tight choke. Their ability to impart spin on the slug is negligible at best. Now a sabot round through a true rifled barrel is another story.
 #82060  by cslade454
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotgun_slug

The earliest shotgun slugs were just lead balls, of just under the bore diameter, allowing them to pass through the barrel. Often called "pumpkin balls", "punkin balls", or "pumpkin nuts", these slugs showed very poor accuracy, and were only effective at the very close ranges where they could be relied on to hit the target in a vital area. In essence, they enabled a shotgun to become the equivalent of a musket. Later types of slugs, such as the Brenneke design, use a weight-based design and rifling-like fins to provide stability and the ability to easily compress and pass through a choked barrel. These can be fired through a smoothbore barrel with reasonable accuracy, and significantly extend the effective range of a shotgun slug. The latest improvement is the saboted slug, fired from a rifled shotgun barrel. The saboted slug and rifled barrel combination provides even greater accuracy than the rifled slugs, and the slugs themselves are more aerodynamic, providing more range and a flatter trajectory.

[edit] Brenneke Slugs





A 12 gauge Brenneke slug
The Brenneke slug was developed by the German gun and ammunition designer Wilhelm Brenneke (1865–1951) in 1898. The original Brenneke slug is a solid lead slug with fins cast onto the outside, much like a rifled Foster slug. There is a plastic, felt or cellulose fiber wad attached to the base that remains attached after firing. This wad serves both as a gas seal and as a form of drag stabilization, much like the mass-forward design of the Foster slug. The "fins" impart little or no spin to the projectile; the actual purpose of the "fins" is to decrease the bearing surface of the slug to the barrel and therefore reduce friction and increase velocity.

Since the Brenneke slug is solid, rather than hollow like the Foster slug, the Brenneke will generally deform less on impact and provide deeper penetration (see terminal ballistics). The sharp shoulder and flat front of the Brenneke (similar in dimensions to a wadcutter bullet) mean that its external ballistics restrict it to short range use, as its accuracy is similar to that of an American Foster slugs while retaining the improved penetration and slug integrity of the Brenneke design.

[edit] Foster Slugs

A Foster slug, invented by Karl Foster (or Forster) in 1931, is a type of shotgun slug designed to be fired through a smoothbore shotgun barrel. It was invented by Foster to enable deer hunting in the Great Depression using smoothbore, choked shotguns. Foster cast them by hand from soft lead, filed grooves on their exteriors, and sold them to his neighbors to feed their families. The Foster is the standard American domestic shotgun slug; they are sometimes referred to as "American slugs" to differentiate them from the standard "European slug" design popularized earlier by Brenneke.

The defining characteristic of the Foster slug is the deep hollow in the rear, which places the center of mass very near the front tip of the slug, much like a shuttlecock or a pellet from an airgun. If the slug begins to tumble in flight, drag will tend to push the slug back into straight flight, stabilizing the slug. This gives the Foster slug stability and allows for accurate shooting through smoothbore barrels out to ranges of about 75 yards (69 m), providing accuracy over far greater distances than the 25 yd. limit typical when shooting traditional "pumpkin balls" through a shotgun.

Most Foster slugs also have "rifling", which consists of thin fins on the outside of the slug. Contrary to popular belief, these fins impart no spin onto the slug as it travels through the air. The actual purpose of these fins is to minimize the friction on both the barrel and projectile and allow the slug to be swaged down safely when fired through a choke, although accuracy will suffer and choke wear may be progressively accelerated when fired through any gauge choked tighter than about improved cylinder. Foster slugs can safely be swaged down much more than Brenneke slugs, when fired through a choke, being hollow. The amount of wear on a choke is therefore much less of a problem than when shooting Brenneke slugs.

It is also possible to fire Foster slugs through rifled slug barrels, though lead fouling (build-up in the rifle grooves) is a problem. Accuracy is otherwise not appreciably affected in standard shotgun rifling.

Roll-crimping is traditionally used to close a shotgun shell containing a Foster slug. This increases the difficulty for handloading Foster Slugs, today, as special roll-crimp tools using a drill press are often recommended for handloading Foster Slugs. During the 1930's, though, many if not most shotgun shells were roll-crimped over an overshot card, and hand tools for putting a roll crimp on a paper shell were readily available and very inexpensive. Using a roll-crimp was simply the easiest way to close a shotgun shell case at the time.

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