Slug barrel / Slug ????

[slimngrizzly]

A Cooworker has asked me to help him sight in his new slug set-up today. He has a Rifled barrel and bought all Rifled slugs...... I told him im pretty sure you need Sabot slugs to get the full effectivness of your barrel. Am I correct here or will the rifled slugs shoot just fine out of a Rifled barrel? I guess Ive always gun hunted with a smooth bore barrel and rifled slugs so I just wanted to make sure if hes throwing lead all over, he knows why..... Whats the right way?

Thanks, Slim

[jbell1981]

Sabots with a rifled barrel.

Foster (rifled) slugs with a smooth bore.

Thats how they are intended to be, but I have seen people shoot deer with sabots in a smooth bore and fosters in a rifle barrel.

[hhguide]

shoot sabots eventually it will start to change the slug barrel if you shoot rifled slugs through it!

[96trigger]

You can shoot the sabots out of a smoothbore but the are not rifled and usually are less accurate, it is basically a not spinning projectile with more unstable flight. The spin in the sabots come from the rifled barrel, so they won't perform very well in a non-rifled barrel. Foster style slugs spin while leaving the barrel and during flight, it is built in to the design of the bullet, not the barrel, so they get better accuracy out of a smoothbore barrel.

As for shooting foster-type slugs out of rifled barrel. It can be done, buy you definitely run the risk of getting led fouling in the rifling of the barrel and thus creating a very expensive smoothbore barrel.

If cost is a factor, many of the major bullet makers have sabots that are only a couple of bucks more than the foster style. You don't have to spend $10-$20 on a box of five. Brenneke, Winchester and I believe Remington all make sabots for rifled barrels in the $5-$10 a box range

[slimngrizzly]

Thanks fellas! Just wanted to make sure!