Deer Hunting With Shotgun

[Flyfinger]

i am going to deer blasting with my new shotgun Mossberg 500, what would you guys suggest for ammo / choke and what would my effective range be most likely?
- Full Choke
The full choke part eludes me though because some say the full choke can actually make your spread/range worse if you have soft pellets.. Think the guys at academy will let me touch their pellets before i purchase?

 

[Luvthunt]

In the past we had to use buckshot in this state. Found that full choke worked fine with perhaps more recoil due to tighter restriction. Double O and single O for deer. But if laws allow Federal rifled slugs are better deer takers. Had the barrel cut to 18.5 in on my 870 and threaded for choke tubes. That worked well.

 

[Andrew Short]

Growing up (early teens) we hunted with dogs and men would take stands similar to driven boar hunting. We all hunted with shotguns using buckshot. Full choke was the most common giving you opportunity to shoot 30- 40 ’yards.

Haven’t hunted that way in 20 years but gah I’d love to experience that again.

 

[Wyatt Smith]

If it’s it’s legal, I like brenneke slugs.

 

[Rimshot]

If it’s it’s legal, I like brenneke slugs.

I agree, I've tested the Federals, Remingtons, and several others in smoothbore guns and Brenneke slugs are almost always the most accurate. Deer never go far.

Range will be highly dependent on what type of sights you have and the accuracy of the load. With no rear sight and only the bead, you may be limited to 50 yds or less, depending on ability and practice. With a rear sight, red dot, or scope, 100+ yds is possible. With a rifled slug barrel and sabot type slugs, even further still.

 

[Andrew Short]

I agree, I've tested the Federals, Remingtons, and several others in smoothbore guns and Brenneke slugs are almost always the most accurate. Deer never go far.

Range will be highly dependent on what type of sights you have and the accuracy of the load. With no rear sight and only the bead, you may be limited to 50 yds or less, depending on ability and practice. With a rear sight, red dot, or scope, 100+ yds is possible. With a rifled slug barrel and sabot type slugs, even further still.

Agree. If you utilize a rifled barrel, slugs like the Remington Premier Accutip you can shoot up to 150 yards accurately.

 

[Shootist43]

All good advice. I've used both smooth bore full choke and rifled barrels in an Ithaca Mod 37 with a slug barrel, Mossberg 500, Remington 870 and 1100 with Hastings rifled barrels. Use slugs if you can. Cloverleafed groups were relatively common with the rifled barrels. A 12 Ga. slug gun isn't for the faint of heart.

 

[Forrest Halley]

If you're going with buckshot, the solution is to buy a box of everything you can get your hands on and pattern it in the gun.

Are you decided on the full choke? If so, great! Assuming it's the factory full choke I doubt you'll have this crushed pellet phenomenon. Avoid extra full and turkey chokes.

A few years ago I patterned a 590 shockwave 14" cylinder bore. I shot everything from slugs to #4 Buck. Remington seemed to be the widest pattern followed by the estate 00B from Walmart in the 25 round boxes. #4 Buck recoils the most out of any load save high velocity slugs.

Winchester has an odd high velocity loadings of 12 pellets in a 3" 00B. Traditionally 00B loads 9 pellets in 2¾", 12 in 2¾" magnum and 15 pellets in 3". This made for a blown out pattern as the wad was pushed through the pattern of pellets at something like 1500 fps. If I were looking for extreme spread in a home defense situation I would use this to defend my bedroom door. Maybe these can be regulated with a choke tube or was retarding device. They are just too fast IMO.

What I was looking for was the best serviceable pattern from point blank to thirty yards maintaining a dense pattern on a large pizza box. I found the Winchester XX 1B 3" and Federal Premium 3" 000B had the best natural patterns for off the shelf buckshot.

Federal FliteControl Buckshot was very interesting as well. It naturally held a tight pattern and just began to open up somewhere around 30 yards and was still quite good at fifty yards. It has a wad that holds the shot together and the gas is vented out through these blow out petals in the rear of the shot cup which serves to slow it down. I was using a 15 pellet loading of #1½ Buck as it was a .28 cal plated pellet in measuring not .30 and not .27. My guess is that Federal is using the same shot for their #2B 20 gauge loading. Sadly this is discontinued.

Anyway, they have a 9 pellet 00B tactical load somewhere around 1200fps and at one point they had an 8 pellet load claiming that it was "safer" because it "reduced" fliers. Commercially they load 9 and 12 pellets in 2¾ and 3" respectively have fun at 1325fps. There is even a 9 pellet 00B tungsten load claiming 1600 fps. Hopefully it holds together and doesn't get blown out by the wad.

THE FliteControl shot cup IS SUPPOSED TO WORK WELL with CONVENTIONAL RADIAL CONSTRICTION CHOKES. I DID NOT TEST THIS as I fired only cylinder bore. Definitely do not use wad retarding chokes like the pattern master/wad wizard which is great on conventional shot cup loads.

Hornady came out with some sort of defensive buckshot which sought to emulate the FliteControl shot cup and it was a terrible copy. It did not work the same and ejection was stiff as I recall. Basically avoid all defensive buckshot loadings as they aren't as powerful or are otherwise gimicky and expensive.

If you wanted to set up a shotgun for the longest possible range you could get out of buckshot for still hunting or walking around solo, you'd want to use Federal Premium 2¾" 9 pellet loading with a pattern master/ wad wizard was retarding choke tube and rifle sights or even a scope. Careful as the wad retarding devices are no joke up close and can cause complete misses. If you needed to get a bigger pattern without changing the choke tube, I'd switch to Remington Express 3" 00B. The theory is that the shorter the shot string, the tighter than pattern. I have a barrel with rifle sights sighted in at 80 yards with buckshot. It is for elevation purposes mostly and the pattern is about 12" at that range.

If you survived reading this post and would like more information or have any questions feel free to reach out.

 

[Forrest Halley]

Growing up (early teens) we hunted with dogs and men would take stands similar to driven boar hunting. We all hunted with shotguns using buckshot. Full choke was the most common giving you opportunity to shoot 30- 40 ’yards.

Haven’t hunted that way in 20 years but gah I’d love to experience that again.

I hunted that way for a long time. It was a very interesting transition from folks being fairly close to one another when shotguns were effective at such short range. As the wads gave way to shot cups and the range increased the hunters stopped standing in sight of each other. I can remember a time where a deer killed at 100 yards was sensational, but now it's just par for the course with the right setup. When I stopped hunting that way, the drivers wanted no shooting into the woods for safety and you had to wait for the deer to break out of the woods. Of course my response was that if the drivers were so concerned about errant shots they should should make constant calls and not carry guns as they could be just as close to a stander and have the same accident shooting at a deer. The discussion of course became very interesting from that point on as it revealed their true motive to be something other than the common good. I too miss the days of knowing the man on either side of you as something of a brother and the great community of the club before everyone became a number and buck fever was the only care.

 

[Hogpatrol]

Going against the grain here. Using a 437.5 grain slug in a 2&34" shell or even larger in a 12 gauge is WAY overkill and 20 gauge with a rifled barrel and Lightfields or Hornady SSTs saboted slugs will kill deer out to 200 yards. In my experience, all the 12 did was ruin meat and beat the snot out of me.
From this chair, using a 12 gauge slug on deer is the equivalent of atomic bombs for crowd control.

 

[Rimshot]

Going against the grain here. Using a 437.5 grain slug in a 2&34" shell or even larger in a 12 gauge is WAY overkill and 20 gauge with a rifled barrel and Lightfields or Hornady SSTs saboted slugs will kill deer out to 200 yards. In my experience, all the 12 did was ruin meat and beat the snot out of me.
From this chair, using a 12 gauge slug on deer is the equivalent of atomic bombs for crowd control.

Interesting data point. Which 12 ga slug ruined meat? I've never used a 12ga slug but I'm a little surprised. I have used 16ga slugs in my drilling and killed a pile of deer with the Brenneke 16ga 437gr slug at 1500 fps MV. Most I shot thru the shoulder and although it poked big holes in the deer, you could eat right up to the hole. The distance was always in the 40-50yd range so nothing super close, impact velocity would have been <1200 fps. There must be a velocity sweet spot in there somewhere.

I just ordered some 20ga 328gr Brenneke for my other drilling. Wish I could find the 437gr 20ga but everywhere is out of stock of course.

 

[Hogpatrol]

I'm using these in a Benelli 20 M2 rifled barrel but have used them in a Mossberg 20 ga pump rifled barrel. Deer drop like they were hit with a freight train. Furthest was a medium size doe at 155 yards.
For years, I used Lightfield saboted slugs but the price difference wasn't worth the degree of dead.

https://www.hornady.com/ammunition/shotgun/20-ga-sst-slug-250-gr-sst#!/

 

[Wyatt Smith]

With my 12 gauge brenneke slugs, the deer run 35 yards every time. But the hole is very neat and pretty, and as @Rimshot said, you can eat right up to the hole.

 

[Andrew Short]

I hunted that way for a long time. It was a very interesting transition from folks being fairly close to one another when shotguns were effective at such short range. As the wads gave way to shot cups and the range increased the hunters stopped standing in sight of each other. I can remember a time where a deer killed at 100 yards was sensational, but now it's just par for the course with the right setup. When I stopped hunting that way, the drivers wanted no shooting into the woods for safety and you had to wait for the deer to break out of the woods. Of course my response was that if the drivers were so concerned about errant shots they should should make constant calls and not carry guns as they could be just as close to a stander and have the same accident shooting at a deer. The discussion of course became very interesting from that point on as it revealed their true motive to be something other than the common good. I too miss the days of knowing the man on either side of you as something of a brother and the great community of the club before everyone became a number and buck fever was the only care.

Completely agree! The camaraderie was great but those days are gone. My grandfather has since passed and that club dissolved as a result.

 

[CAustin]

i am going to deer blasting with my new shotgun Mossberg 500, what would you guys suggest for ammo / choke and what would my effective range be most likely?
- Full Choke
The full choke part eludes me though because some say the full choke can actually make your spread/range worse if you have soft pellets.. Think the guys at academy will let me touch their pellets before i purchase?

Growing up in the 60s and 70s all we had down in Georgia was a shotgun to hunt deer. I still have the Browning 12 gauge my dad gave me for Christmas when I was 14. I always loaded it slug 00 buckshot 00 buckshot.
The Gun still has the Polly choke and I always set it on full. Seemed to work real well for me!

 

[machinistbutler]

Took this little muley at around 100 yards with my Benelli , smooth bore with open sights. Deer didn't go far at all. Took a nice whitetail with it as well. Have a pic of the slug but can't seem to find it. Some type of Winchester slug, 2 3/4 inch I think.

 

[Forrest Halley]

Completely agree! The camaraderie was great but those days are gone. My grandfather has since passed and that club dissolved as a result.

I'm sorry to hear that. It's funny how a man can make a club like that. Or break it in his absence. I once read that hunt clubs are best run as autocracy. That simply cannot exist without one man running it unquestionably.

Growing up in the 60s and 70s all we had down in Georgia was a shotgun to hunt deer. I still have the Browning 12 gauge my dad gave me for Christmas when I was 14. I always loaded it slug 00 buckshot 00 buckshot.
The Gun still has the Polly choke and I always set it on full. Seemed to work real well for me!

My Father and I loaded #1B when turkeys were in season and 00B the rest of the time. My Dad carried all sorts of shells and colored the heads with sharpie to denote the different loads. A dot on the primer for 00B, a cross hair for #4B, a line across the primer from edge to edge for #1B, the whole head colored black for 000B, and a circle around the edge of the shell for 0B. I'd always ask him what he was loading and why. I loved the answer for the reasoning alone. Dad always had something going considering terrain or time of day in his varied loadings. He had 2¾", 2¾" magnums which he called "baby magnums", and 3" magnums. The 000 always seemed to come last because it was big and hoping to put the deer down before it got away. He was an absolute prodigy with a shotgun. The last deer he killed was at 30 yards as it walked across the point of his gun rested across his lap. The safety released and the trigger pulled once and that was that. He carried a 11-87 and didn't often fire it more than once. He never removed his three shot plug after the law changed either and once hunted with one shell to his name after leaving his shell jacket at home and finding one shell in the floorboards of the truck. After that I always carried a box for him just in case as I was hunting with a 20ga at the time.

My Uncle was very predictable in loading #4B with the 12ga 870 pump either 2¾" then later 3" because it had 27 or 41 pellets and he liked his chances better. He fired that gun like it was a machine gun, it was damned fast. Later he wavered to 3" #1B and 00B. Late in life when he carried a 20ga O/U it was always 3" #2B.

I was the rebel loading 3" #3B in 20 ga and later in 12 ga 3½" 00B and sticking with that because bigger is always better. I never had any luck with #1 or #4B just give me my 18 pellets of 00B and leave me alone. I'd shoot 3-6 shells at a deer with a 20ga just out of excitement and later with the 12ga it became less exciting.

I once dove hunted with a man that had a poly choke or maybe a cutts. Anyway it sounded like he sneezed when he'd shoot so we wore him out yelling "God Bless You!" after every bird he shot at.

 

[BeeMaa]

@Flyfinger if you plan on hunting deer with a shotgun more than once, I highly recommend a slug (rifled) barrel for you Mossberg 500. You can find them on eBay for around $200. If this is too much to spend, then I'd recommend a rifled choke as an alternative.

If you insist on using a smooth bore, at least use a quality rifled slug like Brenneke. Sabot slugs are for slug barrels with rifling.

Lastly is to get out and practice. Patterning your shotgun (pellets) or sighting it in (slugs) is all part of the set up. You need to know where that load is going. Another good idea is to write down your results with the load you are using so you can reference it in the future.

 

[Forrest Halley]

@BeeMaa since you brought it up elsewhere...this is a classic case of post and ghost.

 

[BeeMaa]

@BeeMaa since you brought it up elsewhere...this is a classic case of post and ghost.

Yepper. And you put out a good amount of useful information here. Makes you wonder sometimes but I choose to remain positive about it.