ORIGINAL: Paul L Mohr

You can shoot rifled slugs out of a rifled barrel, won't ruin a thing (haven't we had like 10 posts saying this in the past week?) It will make a mess and you will have to spend some time scrubbing the lead out of the barrel. A few companies make rifled slugs for rifled barrels with either a special coating or a harder alloy lead to help reduce lead fouling.

The modern sabot loads have better ballistics though and are much cleaner to shoot. They can foul the barrel with plastic though so you still need to clean your gun with a good solvent to remove it.

Buckshot will not harm you rifled barrel either. Lead shot is much softer than your hardened steel barrel. Chances are it won't even foul it out unless you shoot a lot through it. The problem is there is no choke in your rifled barrel and because it is rifled it will tend to spin the shot as it leaves the barrel. These two combined lead to VERY poor patterns. They will be huge and have a large hole in the center. Nothing you would want to hunt with.

I don't know if they make them anymore but you can find smooth bore slug guns, basically just a smooth bore barrel with no choke and some rifle sights on them. Not as accurate as a rifled barrel though in most cases.

You could shoot a SxS or a O/U for deer hunting, I know some that do. You just have to make sure they have the appropriate chokes and see how well they shoot. SxS's have a tendency to cross paths at a certain distance from what I understand. Like one barrel will impact to the left and the other to the right. I wouldn't suggest either type when there are so many great single shots and pumps for less money that would work better.

Good luck,
Paul