Slug Question

[IowaHunter]

Specifically, slugs for deer hunting. Now, I hunt second shotgun season in northwest Iowa. I've always been primarily a meat hunter, and not really concerned with trophies. Sure, a rack is nice, but that's just gravy on my taters and I'm fine with plain taters, thanks. That changed for me last year when I tagged a nice 12 point non-typical, and discovered that I really like the gravy.

My deer gun is a Mossberg 500, with a 24" rifled slug barrel. This year I mounted a TruGlo 40mm red dot scope, and decided to start shooting better ammo than the plain old lead slugs. Yep, getting a bit more serious about putting another rack on the wall. Today I ran some slugs through it to see what it shot the best. Five rounds each of Winchester Extreme Partition Gold, Remington Accu Tip, and Hornady SST. The Hornady and Remington ammo grouped the best, with Hornady being just a touch better.

I've visited the websites for both companies, and looked around the net for info on expansion and performance of both slugs. Mostly have just found the company blurbs for their ammo. If anyone has or could direct me to more and better info on these slugs, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

 

[redneck2]

Hornady SST's are a funny deal. One batch groups fine, and the next ones are all over. I'm not the only one that's seen this.

FWIW....best slug out of my rifled 870 were the old Remington Copper Solids. Ones with the four petals that peeled back. I could put 3 in a tennis ball sized group at 125 yards pretty easily. Hit a moving coyote at a measured 140 yards. I've got a 2x7 VX-III to make use of the available distance. Zero is 125 yards. That said, guys that used them in anything other than Remington guns never seemed to do nearly as well.

My best advice is to try what you have. If you find some that do really well, go back and get a bunch from the same lot so you don't have to go thru the sorting out process again.

As for expansion, I wouldn't get too excited about that. You're never gonna have a hole smaller than .712". Any one of these slugs that's moving at 1,500fps or more is gonna leave a brutal hole.