Alright fellas here's the deal, I raise chickens and I have a serious house sparrow problem in my chicken houses. I've tried rat shot through a rifled barrel and the pattern is not satisfactory, my question is will I see any pattern improvement with the smooth bore over the rifled barrel. Oh yea, I'm talking shots of 10 yards or less. I've also tried low velocity pellet guns and that is like eating soup with a toothpick and I can't use anything with a lot of punch because it will shoot holes in my roof.

A smoothbore .22 will dramatically improve your pattern.

I don't know how much energy they have but you could look into 9mm or 38 special shot shells. I would not think they would have a whole lot of power and it would give you a little more shot.

Well I just ordered a savage smooth bore 22, I'll let you know if I like it when I get it. I did consider the 38 though and may still have to try it.



thanks for the replies

Got my new smooth bore in and it does pattern considerably better than a rifled bore but I guess thats to be expected. Still a super close range gun but thats what I wanted. Tried it out last night and killed 25 sparrows (ran out of shells) with only a couple misses, seems to be the ticket I was looking for though.

Fantail, thanks for that report. The .22 smoothbore is a fairly rare gun and few of us have shot them. A friend had a very old stevens crackshot smoothbore and I played with it. It really handled the shot shells much better than a rifled barrel but never made the grade as a small game round. Pest control was the best I could say and the pests had to be fairly small. 25 feet was a long shot with the #12 shot and it was ideal for indoor shooting. I see you've found the ideal use for that cartridge.