Shotgun Slug - Guns For Use With Slugs

Guns For Use With Slugs

Many hunters hunt with shotgun slugs where rifle usage is not allowed, or as a way of saving the cost of a rifle by getting additional use out of their shotgun. A barrel for shooting slugs does require some special considerations. The biggest drawback of a rifled barrel is the inability to accurately fire buckshot or birdshot. While it won't damage the gun, the shot's spread increases nearly four-fold compared to a smoothbore and pellets tend to form an O-shaped pattern due to the pellets tangential velocity moving them away from the bore line. In practical terms, the effective range of a rifled shotgun loaded with buckshot is limited to 10 yards or less. Iron sights or a low magnification telescopic sight are needed for accuracy, rather than the bead sight used with shot, and an open choke is best. Since most current production shotguns come equipped with sighting ribs and interchangeable choke tubes, converting a standard shotgun to a slug gun can be as simple as attaching clamp-on sights to the rib and switching to a skeet or cylinder choke tube. There are also choke tubes of cylinder bore that feature rifling.

Many repeating shotguns have barrels that can easily be removed and replaced in under a minute with no tools, so many hunters will choose to purchase an additional barrel for shooting slugs. Slug barrels will generally be somewhat shorter, have rifle type sights or a base for a telescopic sight, and may be rifled or smoothbore. Smoothbore slug barrels are quite a bit less expensive than rifled barrels.

The recent improvements in slug performance have also led to some very specialized slug guns. The H&R Ultra Slug Hunter, for example, uses a heavy rifled barrel (see accurize) to obtain the most possible accuracy from slugs.