180 grain 308 SP vs 12 gauge deer slug

At 75 yards both are more than adequate for most big game in North America. If both were legal I would choose the 308 every time, and I have killed many deer with 12 gauge slugs.

Bear thread! Beyond 50 yards, probably still the .308 for me, assuming the bullet is a partition or barnes or something tough. If the bear is already mad and heading my way, then shotgun. Mostly because my shotgun doesn’t have real sights. I wouldnt use corelokts on a grizzly personally.

Both = dead, so it’s a moot point

I would say the 308 will do a lot more damage. Every deer I have killed, except three, have been with a 12 ga light field sabot.

they just leave a nice 1” hole. Big ole slow moving hunk of lead. Not the shock like the 308 would have.

I do enjoy a good bear thread. Fear of bears is what convinces my wife to allow my firearm purchases.

It would depend on shot placement. The first whitetail I ever shot was with a foster 12 ga slug blew a 6 inch chunk of bone from the off side shoulder. All rifle shots cause more internal damage.

Shotgun slugs are over rated, especially the cheap foster type slugs. A good quality bullet every time

We have a lot of black bear on our hunt Club. I don't think a rifle, other than a carbine is great for bear defense. This is in my conditions where it is thick and I have scared up big bears on my way into my deer stand in the morning as close as 6 feet. The main worry is those big old sows with their cubs. Which I see at least 2 or 3 times a year

I have mostly chosen my .357 mag or G23 to be supplemented by my deer rifle. 12g or .308 will both do just fine. Which can you shoot better and more rapidly? Thats the question.

In 40+ years of deer hunting, I have never killed s deer with a centerfire rifle. Furthermore, never fired a centerfire rifle at a deer.
You dont know what your max range will be, unless you simply turn down shots beyond 75yds.
If you're going to rely on slugs, you had better have a dedicated rifled slug barrel and scope at 75yds. Bad things start happening to foster/smoothbore slug accuracy at about 50yds.
Open sights at 75yds is doable, but much easier with a scope.
If I had the option, I would park my slug gun in the safe and grab a .308 in a heartbeat. No doubt about it.

In that one very very specific and unlikely situation where I had 3 seconds to defend my life from a charging grizzly bear, I would want a mossberg 930 loaded with dixie slugs. Not so much because of what its chambered in but because a shotgun with a vent rib and top safety is the quickest pointing and shooting thing that I have ever shot and I would have the most confidence out of anything that I could make the shot while peeing myself. For the other 99.9999999999% of situations I'll take a scoped rifle.

In that situation, I would take an APC with a full auto .50 cal BMG.

someguy2800 said:

In that one very very specific and unlikely situation where I had 3 seconds to defend my life from a charging grizzly bear, I would want a mossberg 930 loaded with dixie slugs. Not so much because of what its chambered in but because a shotgun with a vent rib and top safety is the quickest pointing and shooting thing that I have ever shot and I would have the most confidence out of anything that I could make the shot while peeing myself. For the other 99.9999999999% of situations I'll take a scoped rifle.

Click to expand...

That is pretty much the reason I would choose my BPS every time. Even in 20ga.

If I had to choose a rifle between a shotgun and a .308 than I would use my 444.

Alaskan Ironworker said:

I do enjoy a good bear thread. Fear of bears is what convinces my wife to allow my firearm purchases.

Click to expand...

Fear is a powerful motivator.

Robert said:

The problem with bear threads is most people have never seen a bear in the woods let alone shot one.

Click to expand...

But we do know what bears do in the woods.

With one exception all my deer have been taken with a Browning BLR lever action in .308. Very competent deer cartridge. The one exception was a running deer hit with a 12ga. slug at 20 yards or so. It hit just below where the back and neck come together and took out a piece of the spine, knocking the deer off its feet. Talk about a brush gun, the slug punched out a piece of branch it hit, took it with it, and left it in the deer.

While they're both more than adequate, just based on accuracy I'd prefer the .308.

I have been hunting bears for upwards of 50 years now; I have killed hundreds of bears in that time. All of those bears were killed with one shot from a .308 using 180 grain Remington Core Lokt ammo - any bear would scoff at a shotgun slug! (Author is solely responsible for embellishment and sarcasm).

308 every time. Even more so with bad shot placement. A pump shotgun would allow faster follow up shots though. That’s assuming you would have time for more than one shot. ha ha

Ive had to explain to my wife over and over again; she couldn’t find a bear in the woods if she tried, apart from at a river choked with salmon where the bears have very little interest in stopping their feast to attack a human.