Shotgun Criteria
07-14-2012, 04:53 AM
#12
Giant Nontypical
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Allegan, MI
Posts: 8,019
I know what the newer equipment and slugs are capable of and my comment was made a little tongue in cheek, if you will! The problem is that I don't believe he's talking about the new equipment. Do you know what ft/lbs are left at 200+ yards with a 20 gauge slug? Conventional wisdom has always been that on deer at POI it should be around 1000 ft/lbs. To get that kind of energy at 200yards you would definitely need a new deer rig set up for shooting the new loads.
EDIT: I did a quick search for energy when talking a 20 gauge. Here is an interesting paragraph from an article by Bryce Towsley and why I would question a regular gun like the 500 the guy is saying he uses at 200+ yards:
"Although the old Foster slugs often struggled for “minute of backstop” accuracy past 50 yards, when I was sighting in, this Benelli M2, which had a rifled barrel, was shooting groups with the Federal ammunition that had some of the rifle guys looking twice. In fact, this setup has the accuracy and external ballistic performance to make it a 200-yard deer gun. Sighted 2 inches high at 100 yards, it strikes 9 inches low at 200 yards and still has 1,000 ft.-lbs. of energy. That kind of performance was unheard of from a 20-gauge slug just a few short years ago. It has all trickled down from the big dog, the 12 gauge, and has completely changed the rules about shooting 20-gauge slug guns for deer."
After reading that paragraph, I would hope you can see that even with that deer rig the slug was dropping 11 inches between the 100 and 200 yard markers. Compared to a rifle wouldn't you say that even that rig is sort of "lobbing them in" at 200 yards? Keep in mind that it is a specialized rig set up just for deer hunting, unlike the shotguns a lot of guys are using that are primarily for upland game and have nowhere near that energy or trajectory. IMHO, unless a guy has a specialized one like Towsley is talking about, he shouldn't be shooting 200 yards at deer.
EDIT: I did a quick search for energy when talking a 20 gauge. Here is an interesting paragraph from an article by Bryce Towsley and why I would question a regular gun like the 500 the guy is saying he uses at 200+ yards:
"Although the old Foster slugs often struggled for “minute of backstop” accuracy past 50 yards, when I was sighting in, this Benelli M2, which had a rifled barrel, was shooting groups with the Federal ammunition that had some of the rifle guys looking twice. In fact, this setup has the accuracy and external ballistic performance to make it a 200-yard deer gun. Sighted 2 inches high at 100 yards, it strikes 9 inches low at 200 yards and still has 1,000 ft.-lbs. of energy. That kind of performance was unheard of from a 20-gauge slug just a few short years ago. It has all trickled down from the big dog, the 12 gauge, and has completely changed the rules about shooting 20-gauge slug guns for deer."
After reading that paragraph, I would hope you can see that even with that deer rig the slug was dropping 11 inches between the 100 and 200 yard markers. Compared to a rifle wouldn't you say that even that rig is sort of "lobbing them in" at 200 yards? Keep in mind that it is a specialized rig set up just for deer hunting, unlike the shotguns a lot of guys are using that are primarily for upland game and have nowhere near that energy or trajectory. IMHO, unless a guy has a specialized one like Towsley is talking about, he shouldn't be shooting 200 yards at deer.
Last edited by Topgun 3006; 07-14-2012 at 05:18 AM.
