Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Shotgun slug pursuit


 The start of my 12ga Slug adventures began a few years ago when I concluded the tests of my buckshot loads. After I had my buckshot load the natural progression would take me to slugs. I tried some loads out of the book with some various lyman and lee projectiles but have had little luck in getting accuracy and the speed I wanted. Since then I dropped the idea for awhile to focus on other stuff, Late this past fall and early winter I decided to pick up the slug challenge again and started by using the same load I used for my buckshot but using a Federal 12SO wad with a 1oz slug.  I roll crimped the slug using AA economy hulls and since the roll crimp on top of a previous fold crimp kind of destroys the hulls  I considered them disposable since they were dirt cheap (free).  Anyways, The first 2 shots were pretty dead on the X if you ask me (with a bead sighted riot barrel), if I remember right I started out at 50 yards then moved back. The issue is the further I moved back the slugs drifted more and more to the right and up. At 100 yards it ended up near a foot right and a foot high. So I guess I have more figuring out to do.  Might just be me, might be the gun or the ammo...or a healthy mix of the me and the ammo, the gun is pretty sound.

My goal is to get  a >1200fps 1oz slug with good accuracy at 100 yards, faster than 1200 would be good. In practical terms a slug that duplicates the factory would be great but to be honest with myself the factory slugs are a little abusive if you're shooting multiples in jack-ass positions during matches.  (If you don't know what a jack-ass position is I highly recommend you read "The art of the rifle" by Jeff Cooper Here is a amazon link to the book for reference only, I'm not advertising for Amazon.

As always follow proper loads and procedures, this is what I used and my results, I am not advising you to duplicate this load as it is not found in any load book.
Lee 1 Oz slug
Green Dot 21.5Gr
Cheddite 209
AA Economy (steel) hull
Federal 12SO wad
Roll crimped.

First 2 shots landed on the X, after that the shots migrated right and high, Note .44 mag impacts from contender testing to the left.