Choosing a Slug Gun                                                                                        

            Whitetail hunting is the biggest season in Ohio. We have some really terrific bucks roaming over our state and every year high scoring trophies are taken. The majority of those deer are taken with a slug gun . There are many things to think about when getting ready for slug season. The most important thing to consider is what type of gun to get. What gauge, what type of action, rifled or smooth bore, scopes or open sights? These are all questions the hunter will need to answer when shopping for your next slug gun. 

            Gauge is the measurement that is used to determine the bore size of a shotgun. Traditionally gauge (ga) is measured by the number of lead balls per pound that would fit within a bore size. In inches the common slug gun bore diameters is .729” for 12ga and .615” for 20ga. Basically this means that a 12ga gun throws a bigger piece of lead down range. 12ga has been, and still is, the most popular slug deer caliber for Ohio. But modern advances in ammunition have really brought up the performance of the 20ga slugs. Federal Barnes Expander 20ga 3” slugs are putting out about 2100 foot-pounds of energy at the muzzle and still carrying 1400 foot-pounds at 100 yards. The same bullet from Federal in a 2 ¾” 12ga load , 2 ¾” is the most common slug load, has 2000 foot-pounds of energy at the muzzle and 1400 foot-pounds at 100 yards. With the 20ga load the hunter will get very acceptable downrange energy and killing power with much less recoil, which is why more and more hunters are choosing the 20ga for a deer gun. 12ga is still the king though. There is a bigger selection of slug loads and slug guns, and the newest slug loads will come out in 12ga first. With modern ammunition either 12ga or 20ga will serve the hunter well and put many trophies on the wall.

            Speaking of slugs there are generally two choices in slug barrels that will determine what type of slugs the gun will shoot. Smooth bore barrels will look like a standard shotgun bore, with no grooves from front to back. And rifled barrels look more like an oversized barrel that would be on any standard rifle or handgun, with lands and grooves traveling from the breech to the muzzle with a certain number of rotations per inch. With a smooth bore barrel rifled slugs will be needed because there are fins on the projectile that will rotate the slug as it travels down the bore to give the slug spin in flight and increase the accuracy. Sabot (pronounced: say bow) slugs have no fins or protrusions to impart spin on the projectile for a smooth bore barrel, therefore the slug is not spinning during flight and it will not fly straight and will give very poor accuracy. This is what rifled barrels are for. A rifled barrel will spin the sabot slug in the same way that a rifle barrel spins the bullet, the lands and grooves are in the barrel imparting spin and not on the projectile. But the rifled slugs do not work in the rifled barrel (a point of much confusion), the rifling in the barrel will actually cut the fins off of the rifled slug as it travels down the bore. This will be a detriment to accuracy and it can actually cause pressure spikes as the grooves fill with lead. So which is better? The rifled slugs generally start at about $5.00 per 5 round box, and have very acceptable accuracy and energy out to about 100 yards and still good enough out to about 150. Sabot slugs on the other hand can start at about $10.00 per box, but with the right gun/ammo combination accuracy and energy can be superb out to 200 yards with no problems. The biggest advances in bullet construction and ballistics are being done with sabot slugs, so while rifled slugs will be taking many, many deer in the years to come the future of slug hunting definitely lies with sabots.

            The hunter also has a few choices when it comes to what type of action to use. Single shot slug guns like the Harrington & Richardson and New England Firearms guns are inexpensive, simple, and very accurate when paired with a good slug. But their lightweight can be a problem when recoil comes in to play. New shooters, and smaller shooters, can find the recoil of a single shot 12ga slug gun to be too much to handle. The heavier action of the semi-auto guns help cut back on the felt recoil. The action uses some of the energy of the fired shell to cycle the bolt, kick out the empty, and reload the chamber. This use of the spent shell’s energy to cycle the action can give faster reloads than a pump gun and it cuts down on the amount of recoil the shooter feels. Most gun makers that have a semi auto in the line up make a deer barrel version, Remington 11-87 and Browning Silver being the most popular. But the draw back is that the gun is much heavier and they can be picky on what types of shells they like to shoot. Pumps on the other hand split the difference between the single shots and the semi autos. They aren’t dependant on ammo because the shooter is the one cycling the action, they aren’t as heavy to carry around as a semi-auto, and they are heavier than a single shot so they recoil less. The Remington 870 and the Mossberg 500 are by far the most reliable and well-known pump guns on the market today.

            Now that the hunter has decided on what gun, and what slug, to shoot there is one more thing to think about: sights or scope. Sometimes that decision is made by the factory; more and more manufactures are shipping their guns with a scope mount already attached to the barrel. These are called cantilever mounts and the mount extends off of the top of the barrel and over the top of the receiver. This is actually a great option when it comes to scope mounting on a shotgun. The scope is attached to the barrel and not the gun so swapping barrels becomes so much easier now that the scope isn’t attached permanently to the receiver. So far as scope go there are a couple of choices, the shooter can go with a no magnified red-dot or a magnified scope.

            Red-dots are nice because they don’t have any eye relief so it can be mounted further away from the shooters eye and still have a full field of view. A red-dot sight is much quicker that a scope because the shooter doesn’t have to focus on the reticule and find the target, the shooter shoulders the gun and the dot is instantly visible and the deer is in focus whether it is 100 yards away or underneath the tree stand. Magnified scopes on the other hand give a much clearer picture at longer ranges, and new ones like the Nikon Slug Hunter and the Leupold Ultimate Slam with the new SABR reticule help with calculating holdover.

            In all there are a lot of things to consider when choosing a deer gun: scopes, guns, slugs, and barrel types. But a little research and asking our skilled knowledgeable staff a few questions can help any shooter find the perfect deer gun.