20 ga slug mold

[BDOG]

I want to put the hurt on some coyotes. If you have a 20 ga mold your not using I'd like to hear from ya. Thanks BDOG

[AMMOe]

Have you tried te Lee "Key Drive" mold? Not too expensive. In the Cast Bullet Association's journal, "The Fouling Shot" there is a series running about a fellow shooting slugs from his NEF rifled 20 ga. It's pretty interesting reading.~AMMOe

[BDOG]

AMMOE Are you Art Oliver? He is from Heber. I hunted with him a few times. Anyway! I have not tried that. Probably will not get around to it iether. Too many irons in the pot.

[AMMOe]

Nope, I'm not Art. I'm Andy. I will post the updates from the Cast Bullet Association 20 ga Slug-gun project if you want. The next installment should be in the Sept/Oct issue. I used to shoot an Ithica Deer Slayer 12 ga. The last deer I killed with it was a 90 pound doe and she went down like she'd never been up. Slugs are mean medicine! I hope you get around to getting her figured out.~AMMOe

[Handgunr]

BDOG,

I don't have a 20ga. slug mould, but I do cast and shoot a 12ga. Lyman sabot.

I've been casting since I was very young, and I'm 50 now. In the last 20 yrs. I've tried (off & on) to get a good homemade slug to shoot as good as a commercial offering in a smoothbore.
Some loads were good, and showed promise, but nothing close enough to compete. That was when I was casting the Lyman Foster type slug and again, shooting them in a smoothbore barrel.

Once Lyman came out with the 525gr. sabot mould, I bought one. I messed with it now & then, still in the smoothbore, and a few attempts resulted in another okay slug, but still nothing great.

That was until I grabbed Lyman's recommended "most consistent load" and at random, shot it in a rifled bore. My father in law had brought over his two Remington 11-87's, both rifled, and a few boxes of his Hasting's Slugs. He was totally sold on them, and at 50yds., he was tossing them all into one clean hole. After watching him shoot the first 3 into that nice cluster at 50yds., I went down to my shop and grabbed a handful of my handloads to see how they would do in comparison.

After he fired the first one, no hole was visual on the target. Again, on the 2nd round, still no impact. After the 3rd round went through, I could see the paper lift and knew that it hit the target, going through the same hole as the other Hasting's slugs, and the previous two handloaded slugs.
I smiled wide, and explained what I saw.

After a fresh target, I had him fire another 5 rounds and they all clustered in one small group much tighter than the Hastings slugs hit. After all this time, I was estatic.........

I went down and loaded up a whole batch and came out to run them through the guns........they shot one holed groups all the way to 100yds, believe it or not. You could see them getting slightly larger, clover leafing at 75 and 100yds., but never the less, they shot unbelievably well.

The "acid test" was when my hunting partner, Dennis, brought out his Benelli semi auto with it's slug barrel, and duplicated the Remington's results. He has shot just about every sabot slug ever made through several guns, and many of them through his Benelli.

After shooting it at 25 and 50yds., the slug impact hole was barely elongated. At 75yds, the slug impact hole was a very small cloverleaf, and at 100yds., an obvious 3 shot cloverleaf. He was amazed and immediately asked me to load him a couple of boxes of them. He took a deer with one last year, and a straight on frontal shot put a doe right back on her butt with a loud thump...he said.

Being that the frontal area of the slug is akin to the side of a nickel, and that it weights an once and a quarter, it hits with a lot of authority at 1400 fps.

Needless to say, I think that the 20ga. sabot should preform equally as well. The beauty of it all is that you can load the slug in a regular shotshell wad with a folded crimp.

I use Federal Field Hulls (same as the one's they use in buckshot loads), 32.0 grs. of Herco, a WW209 primer and a "white" WAA12 wads. I use a 20# wad pressure just to orient it onto the powder, and drop the slug in and apply the fold crimp. Lyman's data calls for the Gold Medal Hull and "yellow" F114 wads, but I had only a small amount of the Gold Medal hulls, and a ton of the others.

By substituing the WAA12 white wads in the field hulls, it brings the slug up in proper positioning to afford a good crimp.


Sorry so long winded...bu t I hope this helps.

Bob