Florida Shooters Network

What do you all think of rifled choke tubes, especially as far as sabot slugs are concerned? I have a smooth bore, and don't want to get another barrel for limited use. It's a Mossberg 930 JM pro, 12ga, and I understand there's more to the swap than just changing the barrel. I would like to have an "all around" setup, just requiring a magazine change, which is easy. I've ordered a Carlson rifled choke tube, with an expectation of improvement with "standard" slugs, such as Remington Slugger. I know sabot slugs usually specify a fully rifled barrel. I've seen some claims on other forums that they work well, some people claiming 200 yards, but I don't know how reliable the claim is.

I have a 20" 870 with a rifled choke that shoots fist size groups at 100 with sluggers and other cheapo slugs.

I've never tried anything else in it.

I don't see how full bore rifling would be any better.

Spin is spin.

Thanks. I’ll get some sabot slugs - looking at Hornady SST @ 2000 FPS - to see what range i can get (150 yds will be fine). If that doesn’t happen, well the fist size group at 100 will do. With regular mag cap and spacer, to extended mag, and 4 chokes, I should be able to go from hunting to defense, or the other way, in 15 minutes.

I forgot to mention that I have another 870 with a 28" modified barrel cut down to 21" with Williams Fire Sights and it shoots fist sized groups at 100 with sluggers too.

Rifled choke tubes work just fine with sabots. Truthfully there is not a lot of advantage if using sluggers. Actually it has been my experience that the soft lead will tend to "clog" the rifling, especially in fully rifled barrels. It is a chore to scrub the barrel after you put a bunch of soft slugs through it. The construction of sluggers (foster type loads) tends to work against long range accuracy even if they do spin a bit because they are so unbalanced. They(sluggers) do rather well out of many smooth bore barrels and they will hit a small paper plate at 100 yards pretty consistently. If you use hornady SST they are a really impressive slug. I use them in fully rifled barrels and they do pretty much as advertised. I have made a one shot kill at about 150 yards. But that is under really good conditions from a kneeling position. A Carlson extended rifle choke will take care of about 95% of your concerns. Some folks claim the high speed sabots don't get grabbed by the choke very well. I never found that to be true. But if your particular barrel doesn't get the results you want, try a sabot that is a bit slower. Something in the 1500-1600 FPS range. the name of the game is a consistent pattern. Sight SST in at 50 yards about 2.5 inches high. They are still a bit high at 100 and real close to zero at 150. Bear in mind the rating of the slug is on longer and heavier barrels than you will ever use in the field. Medium velocity sabots 2.5 high at 50 will tend to zero at 100 and be about 4 inches low at 125. That's still way farther than most kills are made on deer.

I have been shotgun hunting with pump guns for deer for over 40 years (yeah, I'm getting old). Things have come a long way from one ounce slugs at 1300 FPS using paper wads. But the bottom line you are still using a shotgun. You want the proverbial minute of deer, not minute of angle. Find a slug and barrel that will consistently give a 2 or 3 inch pattern at 50 and know that you can easily stretch beyond 100 if you get the chance. You also get a better impression of the capability of the accuracy at 50. Every problem in shotgunning is magnified trying to sight in at 100 or more.
Good luck

Thanks for the advice and the tip on the foster slug vs. rifling. I’ll likely just be using the tube for sabots, since changing barrels seems to be a problem according to what I’ve read. One gun will do virtually everything I need: I’ll be 73 in February, so heavy-duty hunting is not in the picture.

Thanks

I've had great results with Brenneke style slugs that have wads attached at the base with a cylinder bore, and they really do well with a rifled tube, atleast in the 870 I had. The Wolf slugs are this type, and they are very good and very cheap. Made in Austria,IIRC.

Strangely, the rifled choke in my gun didn't open patterns up a lot or give me donut patterns like fully rifled barrels do. I got round, even patterns 20 inches across at 30 yards with S&b 12 pellet 00 buck loads.
Basically it was a modern Paradox rifle.