Deer hunting shotgun barrel

[SSShooter]

OK, I'm very much a hunting newbie, so please be gentle...

I am planning to go deer hunting for my first time this season. Right now I have an 18.5" open bore slug barrel with rifle sights and a 28" vent rib barrel with changeable chokes that just has a front bead. Ideally I'd buy a 24" rifled cantilever barrel, but it just isn't in the budget right now.

So am I crazy to think that I can use either of the barrels I already have with rifled slugs and get reasonable groupings? No, I haven't tried it and I know I need to in order to know for sure, but it's going to be a couple of weeks before I get to the range.

 

[dixidawg]

I'd likely go with the 28", BUT first you should try a variety of different slugs in each barrel to determine what gives you the best performance.

 

[Climbnsink]

Go with the rifle sighted barrel. Will work fine.

 

[t-town assassin]

I'd say to go the route of a cantilever barrel but I understand where your coming from, just did the same with a 870 i have. I am not going to put a $200 dollar barrel on a $300 dollar gun ummm I don't think so haha....I ended up getting a fully riffled barrel but for a while I used a smooth bore and tried using a rifled choke on my rem-choke turkey barrel and honestly I couldn't tell the difference in accuracy with either the fully rifled barrel and using the rifled choke. What kind of shot gun is it? If it's a 870 and your in the area near me(south east MA) I'd be willing to let you use either of the barrel I have to see if you like how it shoots from your gun, so you can decide for yourself. With the smooth bore barrels you should use rifled slugs and with rifled barrels or choke you should use sabots.

 

[arlow]

OK, I'm very much a hunting newbie, so please be gentle...

I am planning to go deer hunting for my first time this season. Right now I have an 18.5" open bore slug barrel with rifle sights and a 28" vent rib barrel with changeable chokes that just has a front bead. Ideally I'd buy a 24" rifled cantilever barrel, but it just isn't in the budget right now.

So am I crazy to think that I can use either of the barrels I already have with rifled slugs and get reasonable groupings? No, I haven't tried it and I know I need to in order to know for sure, but it's going to be a couple of weeks before I get to the range.

The cantilivered barrel is the way to go when you can swing it. That being said I killed tons of deer with a smooth bore slug barreled and scoped 12 guage using foster/rifled slugs before I bought my rifled slug gun. They will shoot very well to at least 50 yards, most likely 75 yards and if you are lucky you might find a brand of rifled slugs that will shoot well enough to 100 yards. You dont need more than a 4 power scope. I use a BSA deerhunter 1.5 to 4.5 power scope that only cost 60 bucks and it works great. Buy a couple boxes of each type of rifled slug and go to the range and figure out which one your gun likes best. When you have the money for the cantilever barrel you can then upgrade. Good luck!!!

 

[Mark from MA]

I hunted for years with my Browning Sweet 16 28" barrlel with just a bead on it. Worked perfectly fine, it shot a good slug. Killed lots of deer with it. Try both barrels...and check your groupings with foster slugs. Use the barrel that works the best.....nothing wrong with that at all. The longer barrel will likely shoot better with improved cylinder, but that's not always the case. Out of my smoothbores, I've always had good results with Brenneke slugs.

I almost think that sometimes, the sabots are so expensive I'd be better off going back to the smoothbore and using cheap fosters.....pretty much the same result. Besides most of the shots in MA are less than 75 yards.

As "upgrading" you'll also be upgrading the price of your ammunition as well. Fosters are 5 bucks a box at most......sabots that you shoot out of cantilever barrels are 12 bucks.......keep that in mind. Also, I've had real finicky results when switching brands...for instance, my Remington 11-87 20 gauge with cantilever rifle barrel won't group Remington Sabots, or Federals Sabots worth a Shxt, but Hornady SST's group great. So now I'm stuck buying one type of ammo. With the Smoothbore guns and Foster's, I didn't have such drastic changes when switching ammo.

 

[Ham Slam]

I tried to use rifle barrels on 870's and 1100's, but I love my H&R Slug hunter. They used to be cheap, not sure what or if they even still sell them. I think I paid 225.00 for mine.

 

[HorizontalHunter]

I have been hunting deer for years with a Winchester pump that has a smooth bore slug barrel shooting the Remington sluggers. It is plenty accurate out to 75 yards to take deer.

The smooth bore is lighter than a rifled barrel and the rifled slugs are far cheaper than the sabots as mentioned earlier. What it really boils down to is what kind of hunting that you intend on doing. If you plan on hunting a lot of field edges where longer shots would be the norm then I think that it makes sense to step up to the rifled barrel and sabots otherwise I would suggest using what you have and the cheaper rifled slugs.

Also as Arlo mentioned buy a box of each type of rifled slug that you can find and see which brand groups best out of your gun. Don't mess with the sights all you need is to be on paper and see what groups the best at 30 yards or so. Then buy some boxes of what groups best and dial in your sights.

Bob

 

[SSShooter]

Thanks for the input everyone. I'll be spending some time at the range in a couple of weeks to try out different slugs and I'm much more optimistic now.

And t-town, thank you for the generous offer. My shotgun is a Mossberg 500 though.

 

[arlow]

I have the 12 guage mossberg trophy slugster. It is a great gun.

To show you the potential of a cantilevered rifled barrel the target below is shooting 3" Lightfield Commander slugs at 125 yards. I have not shot it further yet but I would not hesitate holding a few inches high at 150.