by crbutler on Tue Aug 25, 2020 1:51 pm
Firstly, if you are using foster or brenneke type slugs, you do not want or need a rifled barrel.
That only improves things with the sabot slugs.
I personally have been able to keep them on a pie plate at 65-70 yards.
The sabots, in a rifled barrel are better... but even so, pie plate at 150.
The foster slugs were shot with just a bead or a red dot only, maybe they would work further, but there is drop apparent at 50 yards.
The rifled barrel guns were a Winchester SX2 and a H&R single shot. Both with scopes.
The sabot slugs can be a real rodeo to find the ones that shoot decently at range. All shot pie plate at 30 yards, but only one lot out of 50 I tried shot 1” at 100, and that was lot specific (meaning I brought more the next year and the new ones shot 2” at 100.) The auto loader shot better than the single shot with what it liked, but the single shot did better with “most”.
I don’t think the brand of gun makes much difference for accuracy, you just need to find the ones that the particular gun likes.
The cantilever barrel is best if you are thinking of using the gun with multiple barrels and swapping them, as it’s attached to that barrel- but the group will move a bit each time you take it out of the gun regardless, in my experience (read cleaning) with non single shots.
For slug hunting, say inside 75 yards, there is little advantage to a rifled barrel, and frankly, even with the sabot loads, while you can hit further, they don’t have all that much knockdown compared to the fosters, so I’m not inclined to shoot over 75 yards with a slug gun regardless.
You might be happier hunting with a handgun, if you are used to rifles.