chokes ok for slugs

5mmgunguy

What chokes are recommended with slugs? Only cylinder and improved cylinder?

charliemeyer007

Those tend to work best.

MG1890

Even a full choke can shoot a slug very well. Depends on the barrel. More important is the sighting arrangement.

beantownshootah

quote:Originally posted by 5mmgunguy
What chokes are recommended with slugs? Only cylinder and improved cylinder?


That's typically the recommendation from the slug manufacturers and shotgun manufacturers, yes. Remington, in particular, recommends improved cylinder for best results with its slugs, and I think the conventional wisdom is that most slugs do best through improved cylinder chokes.

I think the reality is that performance depends on the combination of slug in question, gun in question, and choke in question. You can still get good results with certain slugs in certain non-cylinder choked guns, but you won't know until you test them.

In terms of safety, I think you'll see mixed opinions on this, but mine is that any normal slug should still be safe all the way through a modern "full" choke. Of course you're likely to get poor(er) accuracy, and more fouling doing this, so this is one of those things you try not to do, if you can avoid it.

Most shotgun manufacturers recommend explicity against firing slugs though greater than full "turkey" chokes out of safety concerns, and I think that's wise. Also, you do NOT want to fire slugs (or anything else) through a screw-in choked gun without the choke screwed into place. That can ruin the threads, and I'd be concerned for safety, as well.

spirits

Depends on the type of slug. If it is a Foster type (i.e., the old hollow lead conical type) then cylinder and improved cylinder. If it the new sabot type, you can forget about accuracy because they were designed for a rifled slug barrel. I used to deer slug hunt on Medina Base near Lackland AFB in San Antonio, Texas. There were many hunters who bought the expensive sabot types for their smooth bore shotguns and during qualifying shoot their groups were so bad at 40 yards they had to move the targets to 25 yards or less just to get an idea of where they were hitting on the paper. I found that the qualifying shoot was one of the more interesting parts of hunting there, because after everyone had qualified I could move the targets back to fifty yards and seventy five yards and shoot 2 to 3 inch 5 shot groups with my Mossberg 9200 rifled slug shotgun using inexpensive Foster type slugs (i.e., plain Winchester 12 gauge slugs).