Available from the always reliable SGammo
Posted on 11/08/2012 8:39:04 PM PST by Westchester
I have a Mossberg 535 with the standard smooth barrel that comes with the purchase of the gun. What slugs do I buy for it? Several sources say a smooth barrel is just fine for rifled slugs, while others seem to indicate I would need to buy a different barrel.
Thank you.
Well, if you leave beer out in a shallow dish in your garden overnight there’ll be slugs in it in the morning... ;)
But seriously, just look at the packaging — lots of slugs are rifled so that your shotgun doesn’t need to be.
Rifled slugs will fire fine, they are like a badmitten birdie with the weight forward/plastic in the back end and with vanes that will make it spin in the air for better accuracy.
The slugs that need a rifled barrel are the sabot slugs. These are like a rifle bullet in a plastic holder. There is nothing to make it spin except being forced through the twist of a rifled barrel. You could shoot one out of a smooth bore, but it would tumble and would not be accurate.
Use a Foster type slug or “rifled slug” in a smooth bore.
(The advice on the Brenneke is good.)
DO NOT use sabot slugs in a smooth bore. They will keyhole and be very inaccurate.
Most shotgun slug boxes will say right on them for use in smooth barrel shotguns.
I was told not to use rifled slugs in my smooth bore tac mag, because the slugs can actually begin to rifle your barrel as they pass through it, which can result in a ricochet inside the barrel when firing pellets or buckshot out of it.
I will only use 00 or 000 buckshot out of the smoothbore as a result of that information.
If your barrel has a removeable choke you can get a rifled choke. This will drastically shrink your groups w/slugs. The rifled choke tube is much cheaper than a complete rifled barrel but accomplishes the same thing. Compared to slugs in a smoothbore barrel my rifled choke will give me tighter groups at 100 yds w/sabot rounds than the slugs at 50 yds in the smoothbore.
You can get a fully-rifled barrel for most popular shotguns.
I thought you were talking about Obama voters.
“I was told not to use rifled slugs in my smooth bore tac mag, because the slugs can actually begin to rifle your barrel as they pass through it...”
That is not possible. Shotgun slugs are made of soft lead. Shotgun barrels are made of hard steel. Whoever told you that is mistaken.
If you need a moderate to long range slug use a rifle. If you need a short range slug with great knock down power, use a rifle or a shotgun with slugs. If you are hunting small animals or birds, use a shotgun.
It was the guy behind the gun counter at Academy sports where I was looking for slugs at the time.
Available from the always reliable SGammo
Thats just not accurate info. Lead -does not- cut grooves into steel. Also, the slug is not spinning inside the smoothbore. And your buckshot is not richocheting around inside the barrel, it is riding in the shot cup and is surrounded by that micro styrofoam buffering material.
The only potential way to damage your smoothbore barrel with a slug is if you have a choke on it. But on cylinder or improved cylinder, you will never hurt it with slugs.
http://www.stu-offroad.com/firearms/patterntest/buck1-3.htm
Heres a great photo series that shows the innards on the 00 buckshot shell. You can see that white buffering material, and the shot cup that the buckshot rides in. That whole inner plastic cup flies down the barrel as an intact unit.
Thats why there can be no ricochets inside the barrel as that guy warned you.
As it clears the barrel, the plastic opens up like fins on a snake-eye bomb, and the shot is freed.
Oh, and that white granular stuff isn’t truly styrofoam, but it reminds me of it.
My guess about him thinking it can “rifle” the barrel was that he saw streaks of grime and lead fouling in a dirty barrel and decided it was rifled or etched by the slugs.
It was just dirty and a good cleaning will have it as good as new. Those plastic cups will leave a similar appearing fouling after a while.
bflr
Barrels are somewhat individual, some do a decent job with slugs while others put them all over the place. You will just have to experiment with different types and brands.
They now make fully rifled slug barrels.
I found that Brenneke rifled slugs are amazingly accurate from my 1953 Belgian Browning A5. If you are going to be hunting in woods you aren’t going to be taking 200-yard shots.
Excellent, I really appreciate the information. I had never heard anything like this before as far as slug rifling a smoothbore, but I thought better safe than sorry.
But now I think I’ll get some slugs.
good god
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