Shotgunning for Deer – Fully Rifled Barrels

By Steve Sorensen

You can spray buckshot at a close-range running deer, or you can throw punkin balls at them. Or, you can upgrade to a shotgun with a rifled choke tube. All of these have accounted for many deer through the years.

But today, it’s possible to have a shotgun with a fully-rifled barrel that behaves much like a rifle.

Fully Rifled Barrels

In an effort to improve shotgun capabilities for shotgun-only areas, many manufacturers now offer shotguns with fully rifled barrels. Your granddad never dreamed of a rifled barrel on his old shootin’ iron.

Barrels engraved with rifling impart rifle-like accuracy, carry a truckload of energy with today’s modern slugs, and deliver deep, bone-busting penetration. While prevailing wisdom still holds that shotguns are short-range weapons, but some of them can reach out and touch the boiler room of a whitetail at distances unheard of for shotguns.

None of this should be surprising when you look at the new Savage Model 220F and the re-introduced Browning A-Bolt. Both are based on the respective company’s rifles. The 220F is built on the proven and popular Savage Model 110 rifle action, and the A-Bolt configuration is a staple in Browning’s rifle line. You can’t go wrong with either one.

In building the Savage 220F, Savage started with their accurate 110 bolt action.

A buddy of mine has the Browning A-Bolt, and I have the Savage with a camouflage synthetic stock. Savage understands that a lot depends on the trigger, so they install the Savage AccuTrigger on this gun, which is set to break at about 3 pounds. If there’s any creep associated with that trigger, it’s the one who owns the finger that squeezes it.

I also like the Savage because it’s lighter than most slug guns, and the bolt action with a detachable magazine handles and feels like a rifle. Target acquisition is rifle-like – when I shoulder it the scope is perfectly centered in front of my eye. Scopes, incidentally, are something shotguns of yesteryear virtually never wore, but today’s shotguns use them to wring out all the accuracy that’s built into these guns.

Testing Ammunition

And, speaking of accuracy, I tested six different loads. All fire saboted slugs – bullets encased in a plastic shield that is shed once the bullet leaves the barrel. The first groups I shot were marginally satisfactory, but I loosened and then tightened the stock bedding screws a bit, and the groups shrunk.

The Remington 2¾” gave me the best three-shot group – an astonishing .61″ center-to-center at 100 yards. It’s only 50 feet per second slower than the 3″ Remington, which consistently grouped at 1½” to 2″. This AccuTip bullet has a great reputation for accuracy from the Savage 220F, and for deadly terminal performance. All others grouped plenty tight enough to make me comfortable with any of them.

This surprisingly small 3-shot group of .61″ would be impressive even from a rifle.

Virtually every review I’ve read of the Savage 220F showed similar accuracy results, all more than adequate for deer hunting, and the best loads make this a 200-yard gun.

I toted the Savage a few times last fall in New York, and always felt like I was carrying a rifle. Unfortunately, the days I carried it were the same days deer made themselves scarce.

I look forward to taking it out again this year, and it might accompany me to Todd Frank’s Clear Creek Outfitters in Lancaster, Ohio. Todd and his family run a great operation, and will do their best to put you on a great buck.

If you’re looking to hunt a shotgun state, or want one gun that will perform equally well in shotgun or rifle states, you need to consider a shotgun with a rifled barrel. It’s a far better deerslayer than granddad’s old smoothbore, and it will bring home the venison without needing the luck he sometimes depended on when he launched punkin balls.

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About Steve Sorensen

Award-winning outdoor writer and speaker Steve Sorensen loves the Havalon knife, and has been a fan of knives since he begged his dad for a hunting knife when he was six years old. His articles have been published in Deer & Deer Hunting, Sports Afield, and many other top magazines across the USA. Invite Steve to speak at your next sportsman’s event, and follow his writing on his website, www.EverydayHunter.com.

For more atricles by Steve Sorensen, click here.
And for the best deer skinning knife, click here. 

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Shotgunning for Deer – Smoothbores and Choke Tubes

By Steve Sorensen

The one time, long ago, when I hunted deer with a shotgun was in North Carolina where I was invited by a friend to join a club hunt. I loaded buckshot into my ordinary Ithaca Model 37. I wasn’t one of the enviable hunters who could afford the special version dubbed “The Deerslayer”.

Other than that I’ve done most of my hunting in Pennsylvania, traditionally thought of as a rifle state although a few special regulation areas restrict firearm hunters to shotguns. Some of the Midwestern states that are famous for gigantic bucks mandate shotguns only – Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Iowa among them.

In heavily populated eastern states – New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, Maryland – regulations prohibit rifles. The idea is that shotguns are safer. I’m not about to argue the point, but I will observe that areas where hunters are limited to shotguns almost always produce bigger bucks. Who doesn’t envy the monsters from Ohio, Illinois and Iowa?

Smoothbores like these, a double barrel and a pump both made by Ithaca, have downed lots of deer in days gone by. Both these guns have “aged out” of the deer woods.

Without a doubt they get big for more than one reason, but the fact of the matter is that where rifles are prohibited, deer live to older ages. That means more of them become mature enough to sport big racks.

All of that is to say that if you’re an antler-addicted firearms hunter, you’re likely to have opportunity to hunt with a shotgun. What are your options?

Traditional Smoothbores

My success with smoothbores, as mentioned, was less than stellar. I was the guest of someone in a hunting club, and I was the one who got the shot when the doe unexpectedly raced by in heavy cover ahead of the dogs. I missed. I would have been ready for the second shot if my gun hadn’t jammed. The rimmed shell was a tad too large, and resisted feeding smoothly from the tube magazine on my pump shotgun.

As far back as the depression years and earlier (long before my time), many a hunter put whitetails down for dirt naps using 12 gauge punkin balls. Yes, shots were either short range affairs or depended on a measure of luck, because smoothbores plus punkin balls never added up to bragging rights in the accuracy department.

Lots of people will vouch for traditional shotguns, but in their heyday most hunters hunted for groceries, and a dedicated shotgun was economically out of the question. Most of those old-timers have “aged out” – gone to their happy hunting grounds, and their old punkin ball launchers have been retired.

Rifled Choke Tubes

The second choice is a smoothbore shotgun that takes choke tubes. For deer, just screw in a rifled choke tube. These often do an outstanding job.

The author’s Remington 870 turkey gun with a rifled choke tube was responsible for a good 8-point in New York.

Virtually all manufacturers of 12-gauge shotguns offer models that use screw-in chokes. My Remington 870 turkey gun with a rifled choke tube was just the right medicine for a good New York 8-point a few years ago. In that case, the pill it delivered was a Lightfield 2¾” Hybred Lite slug. These proved very accurate in my gun.

I heard the buck grunting on the hillside below me on opening morning in the dark. Rustling leaves told me a chase was on and a doe was in the mix. As it got light, I offered a few bleats on my Woods Wise grunt tube, and the doe came as if Wonder Woman was going to rescue her from the bad guy.

If a smoothbore isn’t for you, and you want something a little more than a rifled choke tube will give you, stay tuned. Part 2 will cover shotguns with fully-rifled barrels.

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About Steve Sorensen

Award-winning outdoor writer and speaker Steve Sorensen loves the Havalon knife, and has been a fan of knives since he begged his dad for a hunting knife when he was six years old. His articles have been published in Deer & Deer Hunting, Sports Afield, and many other top magazines across the USA. Invite Steve to speak at your next sportsman’s event, and follow his writing on his website, www.EverydayHunter.com.

For more atricles by Steve Sorensen, click here.
And for the best deer skinning knife, click here. 

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