NEF Pardner Pump - Turkey 22" -SLUGS?

[xsquidgator]

I bought a New England Firearms Pardner pump for HD, and for occcasional recreational trap shooting. NEF Customer Service told me to use an improved cylinder choke for shooting slugs (it came with a turkey choke installed), and I had a box of Remington rifled slug shells I'd never fired through my old Mossberg Maverick. NEF doesn't make them, but said they are Winchester compatible, so that's what I bought from an online store, a Winchester improved cylinder choke. So, I got the cylinder choke and installed it, but, never having shot slugs in a shotgun, I'm a little leery of accidentally blowing the gun and myself up. I cut open a slug shell today to see if it seemed ok to go with the cylinder choke.

It's easy to see that the turkey choke and slugs would be a bad idea. With calipers, I measured the inner diameter of the turkey choke, and it's 0.72" at the near end, narrowing to 0.67" at the muzzle end. The rifled slug diameter is about 0.72" or 0.73".

I measured the cylinder choke as having inner diamters of about 0.73" and 0.72" at each end. The slug, cut out of the shotgun shell, will pass through the choke with fairly heavy friction. With a screwdriver pushing it by hand, I was able to ram the slug through the cylinder choke, using about as much force as I think one might use in seating a musket ball in a muzzleloader (although I've never done that myself).

So, from this information, have I proven that these rifled slugs should be safe to shoot in my shotgun? I don't know how much friction is ok, or how much the lead slug will deform acceptably in being shot through the end of the barrel. I don't think there's wadding in the shotgun shell, but I'm not sure. Given the consequences of blocking a slug in the barrel, I haven't tried to shoot it yet. Does this sound safe to try with the info I've given? Do I need to find anything else out? The owner's manual is quite scant on detail, which is why I called customer service. I know this is something simple, I just want to be careful since I don't have experience wiht shooting slugs.

 

[mete]

The IC choke is OK. The slug is probably "rifled" ,those rifled slugs are not to spin the slug but to reduce forces on the barrel and choke .

 

[xsquidgator]

Thanks for the advice. These slugs are indeed rifled on the back end. A detail I left out is that with calipers the slug's outer diamter appears to be 0.73" +/- 0.01". The slug either wasn't perfectly round or I squished it a little out of round while I was removing it from the plasic shotgun shell. With a little bit of pushing I was able to fit it through the cylinder choke on a benchtop, so I thought it would probably be ok. Just was leery of blowing something up.