Living in the western states, shooting rifled slugs from a shotgun is not very common. So my question is, which chokes can you shoot slugs out of? I'm assuming full choke no, but modified and improved cylinder are fine.
You actually "can" shoot rifled slugs from a full choke, but it's not advisable because you not only will put added stress on the choke threads, but also you will get horrible accuracy. For rifled slugs, the best is either an open choke or improved cylinder. And of course with sabot slugs you want to go with either a rifled choke or fully rifled bbl. DO NOT shoot rifled slugs through a rifled choke or barrel because you will get horrible accuracy and you will HATE cleaning the leading in the rifle grooves.
You can only shoot sabots out of a riffled barrel.
Out of a smooth bore you do not want to shoot out of a full choke barrel just imp. and open choke.
Mike
It's just an accuracy issue. Same thing for shooting rifled slugs thru a full choke. I've tried it, and if you can hit a gallon milk jug at 20 yards, you would be doing good. I have hit them out to 75 yards, but only because I knew where the gun was shooting. Not worth a cent for hunting.
That's about the size of it. A good shooting smooth bore is good out to about 100 yards. A good shooting rifled slug barrel is good out to 150+ yards. You may find some guns shoot better, but most won't.
Thanks guys for your comments. Both of my shotguns are fixed chokes. My 20 ga is a full from my teen years. Don't shoot it much anymore but lots of sentimental value since it has taken many many birds. My 12 ga is the basic Mossberg 88 which I have setup for home defense. Its loaded up with 00 buck but I have some rifled slugs I'd like to try. Mossberg vaguely suggests no slugs but a couple guys at the range say they shoot fine.
I am considering one of the Rem 870s, have always one since I was a teen. I have too many guns on my want list.
If you get a 870 get one with a rifled barrel for sabots. This will give you a gun that is good out to 150+ yards (like what Caver said). My Ithaca with a Hastings barrel is deadly beyond 150 yards.
Mike
If you are asking about a pistol that shoots both pistol rounds AND shotgun rounds then yes it needs to be rifled.
Now if you are asking about a pistol that ONLY shoots shotgun round then I believe that would be a SBS and would be illegal.
But I will look into it to make sure.
Mike
I'm not totally sure about this because my head is usually very foggy when it comes to the whole AOW vs SBS topic. What I am thinking is that if the shotgun started out life as a non-shoulder fired weapon and has a fully rifled bbl and OAL well under the NFA rules, it could be classed as a pistol much like how a Krinkov style AK47 can be classed as a pistol. However, if the said shotgun has a smoothbore bbl, that is where the problem is and would have to be classed as an AOW.
Moderators, please edit or remove my post if I am wrong because I sure as heck don't want my post to get anyone in trouble with the law on the federal level.
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