Hunting: Get a load of this shotgun's accuracy
The business end of sending a slug through a shotgun barrel has seen serious upgrading since scatter-gunners first loaded a single chunk of lead into a shotgun shell.
At the middle of the last century, shotgunners hunted deer and other big-game animals with lead balls fired with basically the same powder loads and wadding that pushed pellets through that gun barrel. Most loads, often call pumpkin-balls, shot best through a full choke, and every barrel and load shot differently.
A good barrel and the right kind of shotgun shell could accurately hit the vital/kill zone of a whitetail deer at distances of 100 yards. But most hunters tried to slug it out at distances of less than 50 yards for accuracy confidence.
Ithaca and other shotgun manufacturers began marketing shotguns designed specifically for shooting slug loads. The Model 37 Deerslayer even came with front and rear open sights similar to sights on a rifle. The Model 37 even had light-gathering front sights for greater vision and accuracy.
After that, shotgun makers began producing guns with rifled barrels, slug manufacturers came out with many versions of loads designed specifically for shotgun barrels with rifling rather than smooth surfaces, along with a cartridge/shell that would pass as it approached that choking gap (generally full, medium, or open) at the end of the barrel.
Rifled-barreled shotguns began showing on the market in the '70s and '80s, with varying degrees of quality. Shotgun slug makers designed all sorts of single-shot loads known as sabot slugs. A shotgun slug shooter could now put shots together for kill-zone groups somewhere out past 100 yards. Mount a scope on the magazine and clarity and accuracy improved even more each deer season.
But there was always that factor of putting together the right barrel with the right sabot slug. Product loyalties often got in the way of consistent accuracy. One barrel that shot Remington slugs well might not be on target with Winchesters, Federals or even the high-end sabots that sold in a five-pack for what shooters previously paid for a box of 25 slugs.
Randy Fritz, custom gun maker from Bloomsburg, Pa., began applying his shotgun-designing skills with the care and close-tolerance expectations of a Pennsylvania rifle maker. In 1989, Fritz started looking at this array of rifle-barreled shotguns and the plethora of slug loads marketed as sabots and began applying his know-how to making a shotgun that consistently met rifle-like standards for shooting sabot loads.
In 1991 he produced his first custom shotgun. After two years of testing twists as slugs passed through barrels, he settled on a full twist at 28 inches, rather than the standard 34-inch travel per twist earlier shotgun rifle-barrel makers had chosen for sabot loads.
Fritz then added muzzle-break upgrades, stock configurations, shotgun-friendly trigger assemblies, other mechanical improvements, and a good variety of stock and barrel finishes for his versions of custom shotguns produced under the TarHunt name.
Fritz took his assortment of fine TarHunt shotguns to the Association of Great Lakes Outdoor Writers fall conference in Gaylord, Mich. With him went Geofry Wandersee, Rochester-based rep for Lightfield Sabot Slugs. These two presenters give seasoned outdoor writers insights on slug shooting wherever they go to demonstrate their guns and slugs.
"Tolerances and shooting specs can make all the difference in shotgun shooting," Fritz said while setting up a range with small strip banners at intervals to keep a constant check on wind directions and changes.
Today, shotgun shooters can usually group four or five slugs in an 8-inch pie plate consistently. Fritz brings that accuracy down to less than 4 inches and has specifications for longer distances.
Wandersee touts Lightfield slugs for not only being the best load to use with a custom TarHunt shotgun, but also as a consistently accurate load at every shell length and load weight for the gauge of shotgun being sighted-in for hunting.
"You can shoot any load and have the same accuracy with all," Wandersee said of the Lightfield Hybred series. A shooter could sight in a shotgun with Hybred Lites in a 2.5-inch shell and have the same accuracy at 60 yards, at 100 yards, and beyond as with the heavy Hybred Elite Magnum in a 3-inch load.
Fritz saw to it that shooters got a feel for the design of the shooting tool; Wandersee made sure slug accuracy was more than coincidence of barrel and sabot load that day on the range.
Long before Jack O'Connor began comparing loads in .243 and .470 rifles, gun makers had tooled rifles and cartridges to tolerances that made rifles accurate beyond 1,000 yards.
Shotgunners may never see sabot slug loads approach that degree of accuracy, but shooters of modern scatterguns such as a TarHunt model have more than doubled their accuracy range. Lightfield sabot slug loads make for steady accuracy in the long run of sighting in and quick kills on big game, with consistent confidence in each shot.
Wandersee fields questions from shooters at (585) 520-3305. TarHunt and Lightfield gear can be viewed at lightfieldslugs.com and at tarhunt.com.
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