Buckshot in a rifled barrel....not

[Bt74]

Figured I'd get the jump on the woodchucks devastating my garden this year. Screw the .22, I bought some #3 buck for my Mossberg 500 20 gauge. Has a rifled barrel with an integral scope mount. Dead nuts with Winchester sabots, have taken 3 deer with it no problem.
Took a shot at 25 yards at a chuck today....the thing just stood up and looked at me. Racked another shell and the chuck took off running and climbed about 3 feet up a big oak! Hung there like a squirrel, so I put the crosshairs on it and took another shot. Just hung there and looked at me! Walked toward it and it jumped down and ran away.
Only thing I can figure is that the rifling spins the buckshot out of the barrel and opens right up? Did take out two of my pepper plants that were not even in my line of sight.

 

[whacko]

I don't think you are getting any spin on those pellets. There are about 20 pellets in a #3 buck 20 guage load and they definitely are not catching the lans and grooves going down the barrel. At 25 yards I would think you would have hit his ass. Did you see any dust kick up to the right or left of him when you took the first shot? Weird!

 

[Bt74]

I don't think you are getting any spin on those pellets. There are about 20 pellets in a #3 buck 20 guage load and they definitely are not catching the lans and grooves going down the barrel. At 25 yards I would think you would have hit his ass. Did you see any dust kick up to the right or left of him when you took the first shot? Weird!

Pellet grooves way low in the garden dirt. Pulled the barrel off and sighted down the bore, perfectly synced with the scope.
Have switched over to a smooth bore bird barrel, so we'll see what happens.

 

[TOM1960]

Figured I'd get the jump on the woodchucks devastating my garden this year. Screw the .22, I bought some #3 buck for my Mossberg 500 20 gauge. Has a rifled barrel with an integral scope mount. Dead nuts with Winchester sabots, have taken 3 deer with it no problem.
Took a shot at 25 yards at a chuck today....the thing just stood up and looked at me. Racked another shell and the chuck took off running and climbed about 3 feet up a big oak! Hung there like a squirrel, so I put the crosshairs on it and took another shot. Just hung there and looked at me! Walked toward it and it jumped down and ran away.
Only thing I can figure is that the rifling spins the buckshot out of the barrel and opens right up? Did take out two of my pepper plants that were not even in my line of sight.

Use a smoothbore barrel with a modified choke for OO buck. It will put all of the pellets into the kill zone of a B26 silhouette target at a range of 30 yards. FBI, US Marshals Service, and other federal agencies use modified choke in their shotguns for buckshot. Secret Service specified full-choke in their Remington 870s. Why? Who knows. Maybe works best for them. If you want pinpoint accuracy, that is the job of a rifle. Shotguns are not called "scatterguns" for nothing!

 

[KMM696]

Shot in a rifled barrel = pattern with giant hole in the center.

The rifled barrel puts a spin on the wad, which spins the shot inside it. When the whole thing leaves the muzzle spinning, where a single projectile like a slug would just carry on and continue to spin, the shot (except perhaps for the ones in the dead center of the shell) will separate without the wad to hold them together and spin out from the barrel quite quickly, creating a shot pattern resembling a donut. As an added bonus, shot wads aren't designed to stand up to rifling, so the rifling will start chewing them up, and might be chewing up the shot on the edges into shapes that aren't going to fly predictably. In any case, the safest place for that woodchuck is in the crosshairs.

I got to try this out when I was patterning some turkey loads, and forgot to swap out the extended rifled choke with the extended turkey choke. The results were extremely disappointing.

 

[Billsail]

Discreetly check for holes in any adjacent houses, and quit doing that!

 

[mac1911]

http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot43.htm......you need to test your point of aim vs point of impact with your smooth bore as well.
But yes shooting anything but sabot from a rifled barrel can cause many problems with accuracy.

 

[Zappa]

Shot in a rifled barrel = pattern with giant hole in the center.

The rifled barrel puts a spin on the wad, which spins the shot inside it. When the whole thing leaves the muzzle spinning, where a single projectile like a slug would just carry on and continue to spin, the shot (except perhaps for the ones in the dead center of the shell) will separate without the wad to hold them together and spin out from the barrel quite quickly, creating a shot pattern resembling a donut.

This^