Sabot slugs

[paulie]

Hey Mag, check out the oct 08 issue of Outdoor life. They tested a buch of shotgun slugs, and posted the results(pg 53). you may be able to get some insight as to what to try. Myself, I shoot copper soilds and have no problem with them(shooting an 870), maybe your gun just dont like em. Well anyway, good luck to ya. Let us know what ends up workin for ya.

[wack]

mag30079 I use the light weight loc tight. The stuff I use is blue , holds good but isn't impossible to get out either. Loc Tight is important, screws will back out with the vibrations from each shot. If your groups keep getting higher and further off to one side, you could have loose screws on your bases or rings. I set up the scope on my NEF 30-06 with out loc tight the first time and it ended up shooting high right after 20 rounds. Tightened all the screws back up, dead on. Took each one out, put loc tight on each, put them back in. I've shot a lot of rounds with that gun since 1991 and have never had to adjust the scope since.

One thing about shotguns is they kick. To make them kick less is easy and well worth the effort. I put a Limb Saver pad on my Mossberg 835 and even 3.5" turkey loads aren't so bad. To make my gun kick even less, I put a Breako mercury kick suppressor in my stock. Sure makes a huge difference when going to the range to try different ammo and I did both modifications myself. It's easy, all you need is a drill. A friend of mine has shot my gun and went out to buy one identicle for himself. It was nice to shoot the two guns side by side and actually feel the difference. Well worth the $90 I spent. Now if I could just make it as quiet as my bow.......lol
...back to the subject, sabots....sooner or later someone should figure out how to make sabots work. Eliminating sabot pieces as lonlon says about powerbelts makes sense.
 Fasteddie, you're flirtin' with disaster and have probably already ruined the rifling in your barrel. There's a reason they put warnings on ammo box's. It's dangerous to use it improperly. There are rifled slugs that you can use in both type barrels and rifled slugs made for rifled barrels like I use. and rifled slugs for smooth bore only. Why would you put rifled slugs made for smooth bore only in a rifled barrel? I don't know if the ammo you mentioned is or isn't but please don't encourage people to ignore the warning labels on what ammo to use with what type of barrel. There's plenty to choose from what ever type barrel you're using.

[Squirrelhawker]

If I were having trouble getting cross hairs to move, I would be tempted to start from scratch and bore sight the gun first.
 
On a personal note, I have never had much luck with 3" slugs in general, sabots or not. IME, they just don't seem as stable or consistent. This may be due to a lot of things, maybe some having to do with the shooter rather than the slug [;)], but there it is anyway.
 
The SST's would be a good choice, as would the Winchester Partition Gold's which have been my slug of choice for the last 5 years or so. These two slugs will most likely shoot very different from each other out of the same gun. The SST is considerably lighter, yet faster.
 
Since my son never got the deer hunting bug, I am planning on setting up my old 870 smooth bore just for giggles. I shot this rig for years and killed a lot of deer with it. It is an old, plain wood 870 with a smoothbore slug tube, bolt on side receiver scope mount, and a cheap-o 2.5X Tasco wide-field. It was set up for a type of slug either not made anymore or very uncommon. They are called Activ slugs. Red with an all plastic case.
They rivaled early sabot/rifled tube rigs and I have killed lots of deer out to 90 yards with excellent accuracy and loads of knock down. Plus, it is actually fun to shoot and handles way,way faster than my hyper accurate bolt action. I was thinking of carrying it for hunts inside cover where long range wasn't an issue, but a faster handling gun might come in a little handier.

[dxthunter57]

What type of gun are you using
I KNow i have a Browning Gold Deer Hunter and that was very picky when it came to ammo
the best ones i found for that gun were the winchester 2 3/4 inch sabot slugs
and the gun shoots them extremely accurate

[mag30079]

I'm shooting an 870. The thing that bugs me is my first shot was dead nuts center and from there it drifted low and to the right. I triple leveled and bore sighted. I must of bumped something. I'm going to start over and try the lok-tight.
One more question how tight should I go, torque wise? I've had a problem over tightening things and I don't want to break my scope.

[wack]

I've never used a torque wrench of any kind but probably should. You do want to get everything about the same, same gaps between the rings ect. and a rule of thumb is don't bend the allen wrench while tightening. When the allen wrench starts to twist stop. If screws, use the correct size driver and don't bugger the screw heads. If you are buggering the head, your screw driver doesn't fit or you are over tightening. A good fitting, proper size tool is important whether allen, flat blade or fillips. True gunsmiths tools are built specifically for the size of fastener so that the shaft of the tool is light enough to start flexing or twisting at the proper torque for that size. The gunsmith feels the flex and stops. Now days tools have multiple interchangeable tips that don't allow you to feel any flex or twist in the tool so over tightening is easy to do and results in a ruined screw head or bit. To get around that, you need a torque wrench and know what the proper torque is for each application. Old school tools are hard to find and an art to use. New school is a good torque wrench set. Having the right tools is half the battle. Using the tool that came with the rings usually will get you close if you don't "flex" the tool too much.

[Patriot]

ORIGINAL: mag30079

Hello all,

I got my shot gun out this past weekend and went to the range. I just changed my scope rings and wanted to sight in. I have been using remington 3"sabot slugs copper 1600fps. I had a hard time grouping this time and was thinking about trying a different brand of slugs. I've read mixed reviews on the remington slugs and wanted to know what my fellow hunters are using. I'm using a remington 870. I switched barrels at the range to my smooth bore and shot better with open sights, 4" group at 50yrds. I have to much invested in to my riffled barrel and scope to not get the results I'm looking for.

Any feed back is greatly apreciated

mag30079,
I also shoot a Remington 870 (rifled slug barrel and variable 5 power scope).  I've tried a few varieties of slugs and ended up (and currently shoot)  Winchester Supreme Partition Gold Sabot 285 grain, 2.75 inch shells.  I feel it's a great combination.  I feel confident up to 150 yards, but the gun is capable of upwards of 175 yards.  In real life hunting, I've killed 4 deer at 100 yards with this set up.

[Dave]

I just bought a Remington 870 Express 20 ga slug gun with 18.5'' cantilever barrel that is fully rifled. Have to use sabots so I bought a bunch of Hornady 250 gr SST slugs at Dick's on sale for 10 bucks a box. I am an old Rem. Sluger guy so the price really freaked me out. I just came back from TRYING to sight my new gun in. After more shots that I will admit to (ok 30) I still am shoting about a 4 inch group at 25 yards. Really I am not that bad of a shot. Does anyone have any experience with this round in an 18.5 inch barreal? Any sugestions on other amo that may work better.

Thanks

Dave

[EatDeer]

I use the standard winchester rifled slugs in my 20 gauge.  My buddy has started using the sabots, he shoots a mossberg 12 gauge, and uses 2 3/4 inch rem. sabots due to the lesser kick back of the smaller load. He has the gun scope sighted to shoot out 200 yards. I'm kinda conserned about how ethical that kind of shot is while hunting deer with a shotgun? He says he can shoot through a car battery at 200 yards, and can hit the targets every time. Seems to me that kind of shot is too far for ethical deer hunting with a shotgun. I'm not trying to talk down to anyone who uses the new bullets, I'm just digging for information that could allow me to switch over to the new sabots. I guess after next weekend I'll know how well the sabots really perform after he shoots a deer.  

[Dave]

Thanks for the info. 200 yars is a long shot but I've read a lot and seems the sabots are pertty deadly out that far. I am mostly a bow hunter so anythihg beyond 40 yards gives be a nose bleed.
 
EatDeer... what a great tag line! I've been blessed to get 3 nice deer so far, I plan to eat a lot of Deer :>