The shotgun lovers thread...

Ok for the record, let me just say, I am an Army vet and would be the best, safest neighbor you ever had. I do not go out and buy a bunch of military hardware because... whatever reason people do that because I can't understand it. For several years I lived with weaponry all around me, asleep and awake, and never felt safer. IMHO it isn't the weapon - it is the person who wields it that has my attention.

I respect guns like I respect my table saw or I respect my chainsaws. They are tools nothing more. They are tools that can be used wisely, and tools that can be used unwisely.

I also believe in LEGAL firearms. Registered - or go to prison. Sadly I don't think enough illegal gun owners / wielders go to prison.

With that pre-amble... I love my shotgun. I thought I would start a thread talking about shotguns... and for people curious / interested / bored it might be an interesting subject. Here's a video of a guy toying around with my shotgun model. In this case, it has a cut down barrel, which you need special authorized permission to do (legally). A cut barrel improves your ability to maneuver the gun in tight quarters. It also improves your ability to conceal it (which is the primary concern of law enforcement). However even with a cut down barrel... watch how accurate a shotgun is.

Oh last thing. Unlike rifles, shotguns have an extreme velocity falloff. What that means is that shotguns might be lethal to 100 yards... even with slugs... but no farther. In the military I was target shooting rifles out to 400 meters... and higher caliber hunting rifles will travel much farther. .50 caliber military sniper rifles? If you can SEE it... you can shoot it.

 

Remington 870 Express. Came with interchangeable barrels and choke.

Great shotgun. Many bunny rabbits did not make it home...

 

Got the same shotgun. It's the AK-47 of shotguns...

 

I only have the single barrel, but it came with several chokes. Because I often fire slugs, I have to limit myself to the two widest.

 

Hickock45 has some great videos. I wish I had a range like his in my back yard. The 870 is a great shotgun. I have a Mossberg 930 that I use for trap or sporting clays. It's not anything fancy like a Benelli or Beretta, but it's reliable and shoots well. When I was going to try doing three gun competitions, I wanted to pick up the Mossberg 930 JM Pro model. Shotguns are fun!

 

We were at the top of the motorway two weeks ago, and a couple of hunters came by with low caliber target rifles with bipods and scopes. I assume they were sniping rabbits because I can't imagine what else you would shoot out there with a varmint gun. Made me feel a little sad for the rabbits.

However... this weekend I was out there and there sure were a ton of rabbits left over! Seemed like every 100 yards another one was sitting in the trail staring at me

 

Jackrabbits are not - and will never be - in danger of extinction. They're the cockroach of the mammalian order.

I wasn't talking about Peter Cottontail.

 

I've only owned two shotguns... A Franchi birdgun with 30 inch barrel and adjustable choke- made long before the company was bought out. That was a beautiful gun, and it's still in the family. And the 870 with the slug barrel- my 16th birthday present. Great guns, and lots of memories there...

When I was a kid, I had a thrower for the clay pigeons and would go through boxes of them on the beach behind my house.

Wintertime was rifle season... Set the targets as far as you were willing to walk on the ice.

 

12 gage Mossberg...
Typical low budget shot gun. Came with 2 barrels. I have owned it for probably 30 years bought it new at a Big 5. More a utility than anything else. Shot a lot of clay pigeons trap shooting. I own many guns, mostly hand guns for robbing liquor stores. Great way to supplement the income. It's high risk, but the return can be profitable at times...

I live in a coyote enriched environment and believe me, the rabbits are winning. I shoot ground squirrels with a .22 rifle as they are destroying my property, they are winning too. :-(

 

This was one of those tests to see who actually reads your posts! Or, maybe the start of a new sub-forum?

 

Go on, take the money and run
Ooh ooh ooh!

 

Well lately I have been thinking of turning to crime to supplement my income. I just priced out a bike I was eyeing and it's around $6k. So... I thought I would stay practical and rebuild/upgrade my completely depleted drivetrain and that will cost me $1k the way I want to build it. So, yeah... crime is looking pretty good right now...

 

6g isn't even an expensive bike!

 

Love the new topic. I was just killing clay birds on Sunday during a round of sporting clays. My old 870 is a sweet shooter.

I hope this doesn't come across too ticky-tack, but in the last decade things have really improved. So, safety in knowledge......

In many states, semi-rural deer hunting requires a "Shotgun Only" season. For the most part, this means slugs. For old timers the large diameter, sometimes rifled slug is a true flying elephant of a load. You are correct that 100 yards would be the accuracy limit for a clean kill. In the last decade or so, the evolution of the modern Sabot-style slug and the production tolerances of a modern "rifled" shotgun barrels, coupled with a scope have easily stretched the kill range out to 200+ yards.

Rifled shotgun barrels are definitely not standard around here.

This also assumes a flat trajectory shot NOT a 45° lob. I wouldn't want an ounce of lead landing on my head from 500 yards out.

 

shotgun inventory
Remington 870 express... check
Remington 1100... check
Browning 20g side by side.. check

worked at a trap field when i was in high school. used to get to shoot lots of high end shot guns.

 

Yes I have seen some of those rifled barrels and wondered about them - but since I'm not a hunter I didn't know about the "shotgun only" rationale.

In my mind I was thinking more in terms of military / home protection use. An advantage of a shotgun is that if you fire one in a house, and you miss what you were firing at, you are probably not going to kill your neighbor. Fire a rifle in your house, and miss, and that round might go through two other homes before coming to rest.

Ugh. I don't even want to think about it.

 

Shotgun only rationale exists mostly east of the Mississippi. It's due to population density. In most of those areas you can barely swing a cat without hitting someone, much less fire a rifle.

 

Showing my son the difference in spread between a slug, 9 pellet buckshot, and birdshot from the same range. The birdshot is almost invisible.

 

In some places they combine the cat swinging and the shooting

 

Take a frisbee cat, throw it spinning into the air. Blast it with your shotgun. Repeat until cat cannot be thrown anymore. Redneck fun times!

* frisbee cat is a cat that has been run over so many times that it is basically flat, dessicated, and totally fun!

 

Haven't fired a shotgun since I was a pre-teen.

 

Dad was a serious outdoorsman and he gave me my first shotgun for my 7th birthday. It's a Remington 410 side by side. I was too small to properly reach the trigger so he had to cut down the stock by about 3". I couldn't miss with that thing and it provided many a meals on our camping trips. Shotgun wasn't the first gun for me though. For my 6th birthday I got a Ruger 22 cal 6 shooter. I couldn't hit the broadside of a barn with that thing till dad figured out I was squinting with the wrong eye. His solution was too yank the front sight off with a pair of pliers and tell me not to close one eye and it worked like a charm. Still have both guns today and sadly haven't fired em in many years. Took that 6 shooter to school as part of my bank robber halloween costume one year. Oh my how times have changed...

 

I cannot believe a thread about riding as a passenger in the front seat of a car has gone to 23 posts...

Wait - what? Oh, THAT kind of shotgun.

Never mind!

 

I had an old .22 pistol that my shop teacher worked on in school... He redid the grips. I can't see that happening anymore. Or the gunrack clearly visible in my back window of the high school parking lot.

And I grew up in one of those "shotgun only" deer season locales... Which also cheerfully excused students for opening day if they provided their hunting license upon return. This practice is still in place... But I'm sure it won't last much longer.

 

OK you country hicks, I'll join in...

Gun rack in the back of truck in High School parking lot - check...
30/30 Winchester in said gun rack in school parking lot - check...
Unlocked doors of said truck - check...
Buck knife (or Old Timer) on belt in school every day - check...

Weaponry used or wielded against humans in said school in my short 3 years there - none.

HOWEVER - there were only about 40 kids 9th -12th and they were of homogenous ethnicity, from about 10 different families, with a few of us outliers there to spice things up.

 

Ahhh, the old days. I remember back in the mid 90's when Brea Olinda High School had evening Adult Education on campus. One of the classes was gunsmithing. Every Tuesday night we would walk into school with our "tackle boxes" - tools, files, stones, etc. in one box and your firearm in the other. Our first semester was practicing on old Smith & Wesson "Victory" model revolvers in .38 regular (not modern specials). The next semester was the venerable 1911. I remember buying a Norinco (of AK 47 fame) copy to work on first. I still have that pistol and after a full semester of work, it remains one of the smoothest shooting tools in my shed.

Some would say it was miraculous none of us went ballistic and shot up the school. After my three years of practice smithing, the class was abruptly cancelled. I remember the teacher telling me that it was one of the only classes (besides sewing) that had a waiting list every semester.

It was also the only class I remember taking where the students always showed up early and stayed late. The posted 1-hour class would often run 3 hours with responsible adults fine tuning their weapons and passing along free experience to the newbies.......NO whining or safe spots allowed!

 

My firearms are not illegal, they're just undocumented.

Well, actually 2 1/2 were purchased in Cali, so somewhere there are 4473 and DROS forms. Most rifles aren't required to be registered, even here in the PRK. We're not quite that Orwellian, yet.

This is a common belief, but even birdshot can penetrate walls, and rifle penetration is highly dependent on the round. The .223 Rem/5.56 NATO achieves it's lethality from the frangible, tumbly nature of the round, and the velocity/lethality of the round drops severely after going through drywall. There is some thought that an AR might actually be one of the safest home defense weapons, as counter-intuitive as that seems.

But shotguns are cheap, regulated in a looser fashion and not difficult to train with, (When set up well.)

I have a '64 Ithaca model 37 that's more of a wall hanger, and an 870 Super Express that I made tact-i-cool, (I should have left it as a duck gun and just bought an 870 tactical.) When I was stationed aboard MCAS Yuma, we trained with Rem 870s and Mossbergs. I did some upland game hunting with a Moss 500 and a Winchester 1300. All decent weapons, but I prefer the 870. I like me some scatterguns.

 

Buckshot (anything heavier than #4) will penetrate four sheets of drywall at close range... But will not penetrate a 5th. Birdshot at close range will penetrate two sheets of drywall (one wall), and will not penetrate the paper of a third sheet at close range. Shot through a wall, even at close range, birdshot will probably not break human skin.

I hear you about the low caliber high velocity rounds. As they taught us in the Army... when firing at a hard target (armored vehicle) a 5.56 will bounce off due to its tumbly flight nature. A .50 caliber will go straight through (most everything short of a tank). But a 7.62... that will go in one side, and then ricochet around on the inside

 

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but since 2014 long gun purchases and transfers are now registered by the state.

 

Yeah I was wondering... I was pretty sure they were all registered.

Transportation rules are a little different however. Long guns you just have to have unloaded, but you can transport anywhere (yes that includes in a gun rack in plain view in your pickup). Handguns have to be unloaded and you have to secure. Secure means lockbox or similar, or locked in your trunk, but does not include being locked in your glovebox.