Peter Capstick said that if he had to follow a wounded leopard into the thick brush, he felt that the 12 gauge shotgun, loaded with buckshot, evened the odds better than any rifle. Buckshot, firing nine, ,30 cal balls in the standard loading, is a devastating close-range weapon.
Police routinely carry a shotgun in the patrol cruiser, as it is well-known as a fight stopper, and just taking it out of the car is enough to defuse many a tense situation.
We riflemen forget that until the development of rifling, all shoulder arms were smooth bore weapons. Every manner of game has fallen to what was originally a shotgun.
With a nominal bore diameter of 0.729 inch, the standard 12 gauge slug load throws a one ounce (437.5 grain) chunk of lead. That will put a big bloody hole in whatever it happens to hit. For years, the ne plus ultra of slugs was the Brenneke. Nowadays there are a bewildering variety of slugs to satisfy just about any hunter, or any accuracy buff.
Some localities restrict hunting to slug guns only. The hunters there have long ago learned how to make the best of the local hunting situation, and use fully rifled barrels to wring the best accuracy out of their slug guns.
Oh, I can hear the naysayers now: Shotguns are inaccurate and would tend to wound game animals. Well, maybe, if you don't know what you are doing. A little practice will tend to mitigate taking shots that will wound game. Shoot until you can put every shot into a nine-inch plate at whatever range you are likely to shoot.
Lets look at a target.
That is three of the Remington standard slug load as fired through a smoothbore barrel, offhand, at 50 yards. I'm sure that with a little practice, I could put them all in the bull. That group measures just 4.4 inches.
The standard Remington one ounce Slugger slug leaves the muzzle at 1560 fps, with 2300 lbs of energy. At one hundred yards it is still traveling at 977 fps, with 926 foot pounds of energy. And, it is going to put a 3/4 inch hole in whatever it hits. That lets a lot of blood out. The momentum alone is going to carry it through a whitetail deer. As a matter of fact, the ballistics compare favorably with many muzzleloader round-ball loads.
If you have a shotgun in your closet, then for very little money, you can try your hand at deer hunting. Even if you are a seasoned rifleman, get out your old shotgun and try a few slugs through it. You might gain a whole new appreciation for your smoothbore.
2 comments:
I remember reading somewhere about someone who got a Lee slug mold and bought the cheapie one ounce shot loads. He then opened up the loads, melted the lead, and cast himself some slugs. He used a Lee Load all to reset the crimp.
I gonna have to dig up that magazine sometime and try it out. There is a huge price difference between slugs and shot loads. This would be great at the very least for pre hunt range practice.
I grew up hunting with slugs. At one time I made my own, using a .58 cal mold, and a plastic sabot. They packed quite a whallop when they hit.
I used to help teach hunter safety. They head instructed always claimed that there was not an animal native to North America that couldn't be taken with a 12 ga. He had bagged a Kodiak using #6 bird when he suprised one while working in Alaska. The laugh of the story was that the bear landed on him when he killed it, and it was several hours before anyone went looking for him.
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