Better Half and I took Janus to the range today. Suffice to say, he performed as well as might be expected:
One strange thing though – I did purchase some 300 grain slugs to use, just in case, you know, and decided to throw one downrange today. The target was about 50 yards away, and bear in mind that my 870′s barrel is not rifled. This was the end result:
And a closer shot:
The slug is a sabot round, so all I can figure is that the sabot detached poorly, and acted like a sail/brake on its way off… otherwise, a round tumbling within 50 yards seems a bit strange to me, even with no rifling to stabilize it. Of course, not being an armorer/gunsmith/ballistics expert, I have no idea.
At any rate, Better Half shot a real, honest-to-God firearm for the first time in her life today (and I was a blithering idiot and forgot to take pictures), and did pretty well. Thankfully, a friend we went with brought along a 22/45, which she took to quickly and appreciated due to its negligible noise and kick. Time for me to start shopping for an integrally suppressed .22 rifle, I do think…
Anywise, time to go clean.
Many of the new sabot slugs are intended for rifled barrels. There may be a note to that effect on the box, or the mfgr’s slick brochure. I cast the old style hemispherical (nearly) slugs with a Lee Precision mold. The traditional slugs will probably be more accurate, with these the accuracy reportedly depends on finding one that your shotgun shoots best.
Good work bringing Better Half into the fold.
Yup, that would make sense, then. For the next batch of slugs, I will probably look into the more traditional forms, I guess
. As it is now, the shot in question was taken at 50 yards, which is about two to three times farther than any shot in my apartment would be, so I can deal with the limited accuracy. And, when you get right down to it, 300 grains doing 2000fps is going to hurt, whether it hits you tip-on, or sideways.
.
And she may not quite be a gunny yet, but Better Half at least acknowledged that shooting was fun, once you got past the noise