TO ALL,

Which make, weight, design, etc. slugs are you finding accurate in the following gun?

THE GUN; Remington 870 Magnum. 20" smooth bore. 'Cation' Extended rifled choke.

Thank you for your input.

Regards,

Sam Clemmons
eclemmons@hotmail.com

Regretfully, Sam, there's no easy pat answer. Two identical 870s with consecutive serial numbers right off the assembly line may do well with different slugs.

I've been putting slugs through various 870s for over 30 years. What I've found is that only range testing can show which slug will work best in a given shotgun.

One of my slug shooter 870s has a rifled choke tube in it. The best grouping slug right now is the KO Brenneke. Second place, the old Winchester Forster style 1 oz HP.

The other 870 I slug with likes the KO also. This is the first slug that both have "Liked" in over a decade of bench testing. This 870's second choice is the 1 1/4 oz Rottweil Brenneke.

Buyamessa 5 pack of diverse brands, stick to the Brenekkes and Forsters, no sabots. Take your anti-inflammatory of choice, use a wearable recoil pad, and grind out three shots groups until one slug shows superior. Buy lots of that one, preferably from the same lot.

The good news is there's no ineffective 12 gauge slugs.

HTH....

I have been shooting a M870 in 12 g for a number of years. I have used the std 20" rifle barrel smooth bore which liked handloaded Brenke, the only reason I like those handloaded was the factory loads are rather slow, if I remember around 1300 fps. I have also used a 26" imp cylinder barrel with a scope and they pretty much like the same loads. I recently purchased a 24" rifled barrel and so far it is deadly accrurate with sabot 50 cal, I shot this round for the first time last week and it shot 6 inside of a 2 to 2 1/2" cirlce at 50 yards. It does not come near that with foster type or my Brenke. I also bought the Lyman sabot and Lee sabot mould for 1 1/4 and 1 oz loads but these loads proved as bad as the foster, I will try some different combos with the cast slugs since I now own the moulds. I agree with the other poster buy several different sabots and test.

BTT

[ 08-05-2002, 19:21: Message edited by: raamw ]

Thanks to all so far.

I am familiar with the concept of "Let the gun decide", and agree 100%.

My main concern was if I needed to try the sabots or not. I am not aware of the difference that it may make in a gun with only the choke rifled.

If I am understanding you correctly,.............. use the lead slugs W/O a sabot.Yes?

Many years ago I used 'Rottweill-Breneke' slugs in a 1100 smooth bore that was NICE on accuracy.

Thanks for the help.
Regards,
SAM

Sam, smoothbore= no sabots. Even with a rifled choke.

FYI, my two 870s are set up similarily, biggest diff is one has a 20" bbl. t'other an 18".

The 20" bbl has the rifled tube, it shoots the KOs into a bit more than 4", EDGE TO EDGE, at 100 yards.

The 18" bbl is the shortened original bbl, no choke or tubes. Shoots into less than 5". In this case at least, a rifled tube buys less than 1 inch at 100 yards, which is about 2X the maximum shot distance I have.

Also, learned on some herd control work that sabots may be wonderfully accurate in fully rifled bbls, but the blood trails were longer and scantier....