Hungting with 18" Barrel?

[Sean Cloherty]

Hunting with 18" Barrel?

I am new to hunting and new to shotguns as well.

What can you tell me about how useful my 870 Marine Magnum (purchased originally for HD only) would be for turkey, deer, duck, doves, grouse, etc.

I am interested in what type ammo would be best for an 18' bbl and whether or not it is even worth using this SG for hunting.

Will I need to be using 3" shells and calling turkey into my lap?

Thanks for any and all info.

 

[sm]

The advantage of longer bbl is to help keep one swinging the gun smoothly, and it shortens the apparent lead on crossing targets. That said one can do anything with a 18" bbl one chooses to. May I suggest looking at the two sticky posts at the top of this forum, these refer to some classic threads addressing various pertinent components of shotguns and uses.

I would start with gun fit, progress to patterning my gun to see what loads/chokes/distance correspond to game being sought. "Pattern boards"is what you want to read about on that note. We just stared a thread in reference to stance and foot position.

Personally , I don't have anything but 2 3/4 " chambers , that's what I've always used. Others more learned and experienced can help with those loadings in 3" and 3 1/2 ".

Practice with real light loads ( 7/8 oz. , inexpensive dove and quail ) will allow focus on form, lessen recoil, less chance of flinch...good ears help too.

" practice becomes habit, habit becomes faith"...meaning the more you mount , dry fire, practice, shoot pattern boards...the shotgun becomes an extensin of you...no matter the bbl length.

HTH

 

[Dave McCracken]

A short barreled 870 with an open choke like the MM does a fairtomiddlin' imitation of a quail and/or grouse gun. Shots run from real close to 25 yards, well within the limits of an open choke, properly loaded. Try field loads of 8s for starters.

It'll also serve as a skeet gun, and the doubles will help you learn fastnfancy shucking.Same load.

For waterfowl, turkey etc, more choke is needed. A separate barrel with choke tubes can be purchased, or, heh,heh, another 870 more suited to this. Then practice with one is to most purposes practice with all.

As for deer, good work can be done with this as is out to 50 yards with the best slug, found only after benchtesting various ones. The bright finish is a slight drawback for most hunting, alas.

HTH...

 

[Coltdriver]

I had the same question you have posed.

What I have learned is that there is no velocity improvement with a shotgun after 21" of barrel. The longer barrels are primarily there to benefit aim radius and to provide a little more swing weight when shooting flying birds. 18" barrels give about 95% of the velocity of a longer barrel.

If you take the advice of the above posts and investigate the TFL archives there is a post describing using an unchoked 18 inch shotgun. Turns out they work just fine for a lot of things and with a choke they can be tuned to work for even more applications.

So what is the big deal with 3" and up shells? The environmentally friendly shot now mandated for waterfowl use is actually heavier than lead and needs more oomph to achieve the same performance as lead. From a ballistic perspective the actual differences are fairly small. Sounds more like a means to sell more guns and ammo IMNSHO.

Anyway, I am in the same boat as you having just purchased an 870 police turn in with an 18 inch barrel. I took it out and tried a 25 yard shot at a 10 inch target (not the 30+ inch area normally used as a shotgun standard) and with #6 shot it would have zapped a crow just fine. At 40 yards I would still give it a majority potential but I am going to try a larger shot size for the 40 yard shots as recommended by the above mentioned TFL archive post. The theory being that a 1 and 1/8 oz load of #5 shot would tighten up a slightly longer shot in a short barrel open cylinder.

We will see. If you experiment, let us know what works for you.

 

[sm]

Coltdriver,
hard # 5 shot a favorite of mine. If the hc trap load doesn't do, bump up to the pigeon load...and see.

keep us posted.