Well for starters I highly doubt they test any of the ammo or guns at the distances printed on them. I would bet most slug guns are tested for accuracy at around 50 yards or so. Someone might have actually called and asked. I wouldn't be suprised of some companies don't even test them other than to see if they function.

I don't think ammo companies really test ammo for accuracy at all. It would be pretty hard since most of the guns are pretty picky on what ammo they like.

Just because the box has a 200 yard trajectory on it doesn't mean you can shoot it that far. They just use a ballistics program and estimate the trajectory based on speed and weight. As far as a sabot round being able to shoot farther than a rifled slug. Well, yes and no. It all depends on how it is loaded and how well your gun likes it. Some sabot rounds are very simular to some rifled slugs in trajectories, speed and power. And some rifled slugs are pretty accurate out of rifled barrels. Until the barrel leads up that is.

Case in point, I can shoot winchester super X rifled slugs that go about 1700 fps and weigh an ounce out of my H&R ultra slug gun. They group between 1-2 inches for 3 shots at 100 yards. I tried some of the faster barnes bullets at 1900 fps with a 328 grn pistol bullet. They would not group on a 8x10 piece of paper at 100 yards. Was the potential to shoot farther there, sure it was. Too bad my gun hated them and you couldn't hit anything with them.

However some of the newer sabot slugs with the pistol bullets offer better ballistics than a large chunk of lead. Even if they weigh the same. This could give you better down range performance even if the weight and velocities were the same. Not to mention better bullet performance on game.

In most cases with your average slug gun 150 yards is pushings it. 200 yards most likely isn't going to happen with your average set up and shooter. That's like the holy grail for slug shooters now.

Can you shoot a slug gun with open sights? Sure you can as long as you are not half blind. I see no reason why you couldn't put a bullet in the vitals of a deer at 75-100 yards if you could shoot well enough. At 50-75 yards I would actually suggest open sights if you shoot well with them. A scope could help you shoot tighter groups off from the bench though.

I would say plan on shooting 100-130 yards with a modern slug gun and ammo, and if you can get 150 yards and be accurate better yet, but consider yourself fairly lucky if you don't have to do a bit of testing to get there. The ammo is capable of it, it's just finding a gun that will stabilize these bullets at those speeds and distances.

Also keep in mind wind deflection at longer yardarges with most slug ammo is pretty poor. It doesn't take much to blow one off quite a bit. Like 5 inches or more at 125 yards with a 10 mile an hour cross wind. I'm sure the SST's are better than that though.

Paul