I just got off the phone with a friend who is an avid shooter and he was talking to some guys from New York that have fully rifled barrel shotguns and shoot rifled slugs. Does this make any sense? I would think that the rifling in the slug would get fouled up by the rifling in the barrel. I would also think there would be a lot of lead fouling in the barrel. I'm far from a genius when it comes to shooting rifled shotguns, but I have tried just about every saboted slug out there to achieve the performance I've settled on. I've always shot sabot slugs thru my 12ga 11/87 remington shotgun and I have a particular slug that shoots very well for me (federal barnes expander 3"). I don't intend to switch because I'm not sure there is much room for improvement and I like the performance of the slugs on the game I hunt. But, having this discussion with my friend this morning made me think of what happens when you shoot a rifled lead slug, or even a non-rifled lead slug thru a rifled barrel? I would think the lead fouling would be heavy?
We use to have to hunt here (Massachusetts) with smoothbore's years back and we had some impressive groups at 50 yards with the Remington 1100 3" magnum guns shooting the 3" remington slugger slugs. We had a couple guns that would shoot a 5 shot group and pretty much all touch. But, when we stepped out to 100 it was like a different gun. Now with the sabots, and the rifled barrels it's a lot better. I can achieve 2 - 2 1/2" groups at 100 with the 11/87 and with the 1100 and the hastings rifled barrel about the same performance, although that gun shoots Winchester sabots best.
Thanks for any replies on this, as I can't imagine all that lead can be good for the rifling.
John