GunsAndOptics: Deer Hunting With Slug Guns

I have been hunting whitetails since I was 16 years old in NYS. From the time I was 16 until about two years ago, most of the deer I have taken were with shotguns. The first deer I ever harvested was with a 20 gauge semi- automatic shotgun with just the vent rib sighting plane and foster slugs. Distance as I recall was all of 10 yards. I was on state land and hunting off the ground and was backed up into a pine tree partially hidden by the boughs. Someone had shot perhaps 100 yards or so off to my left and I was in a little clearing. The 8 point sauntered on in and at about 10 yards I dropped him. I was definitely hooked.

Around that same time I was also bow hunting with a recurve Fred Bear bow and using wooden arrows with Bear Razor head broad heads and feathers. I think it was the Grizzly model and I simply shot off the padded bow shelf and with fingers using a traditional leather glove on my release hand. I would love to tell you I took another 8 point with that bow, but I didn't. Even though I now shoot a Bear Instinct compound with carbon arrows and use a release along with plastic vanes and replaceable blade broad heads, I still remember how I felt hunting in those early days. I was one with all of those who had gone before me in the pursuit of big game with the bow.

In the many years following that first whitetail with the 20 gauge, I killed all of my deer with an Ithaca Deer Slayer Model 37/12 gauge pump bored straight cylinder (.704 inch internal diameter as opposed to the 12 Gauge's nominal .729 measurement), wearing a Weaver K2.5X fixed scope with a bold reticle and firing either Remington or Winchester Foster slugs. In those days, our guns were PIE PLATE accurate. Out at 75-85 yards or so, I could put (5) into a paper plate routinely. I didn't say that I got a tight groups. I said I could hit the paper plate with 5 slugs, though some were in the center, some were high, some were low and some just cut the outer edge of the plate enough to say, I HIT IT. Funny thing is at last count before handing the gun down to my son-in-law one Christmas, I had taken 28 deer with that shotgun. I am always fond of saying that MOST deer in the N/E USA are shot even today at less than 100 yards. I never tried to make that shotgun into anything other than what it was, and yet it performed very well for the years I owned it.

For a few years after than I hunted with another Ithaca Deerslayer II model called "The Storm" which had a rifled barrel and used rifled saboted slugs. That gun had a trigger job done and the factory stock shortened slightly to fit me by the gunsmith at the King's Ferry, NY location shortly before they closed it down. Ithaca Gun which operated out of King's Ferry, NY (not far from where I now live), was sold at auction on November 29, 2005. They reopened in Ohio and can be contacted at Ithaca gun, 420 North Warpole St., Upper Sandusky, Ohio 433521. their phone number is 1-877-648-4222 and service inquires on existing Ithaca's can be done by email at (service@ithacagun.com).

That particular shotgun which I still own was the most accurate shotgun I ever fired. Out to around 150 yards, I would NOT hesitate to use it today in most of the areas I hunt. I have a previous post (8/22/08 12 Ga vs. 20Ga) on that particular gun showing a target with the best load I had found at the time. The best load I came up with for that slug gun was the Federal Barnes 3/4 oz expander slugs. They would group under 2.5 inches out to 125 yards and within 3.5 inches out to 150 yards. I still have quite a supply of those particular slugs on hand and might take that gun hunting again one day just for nostalgia purposes. I took several deer with that shotgun and load. and I would not feel handicapped in the least to hunt with it today.

ALL THAT BEING SAID, what is available to the hunter today who either is forced by regulation to hunt with slug guns or who does so by choice:

One of the most popular is Remington's model 870 Pump gun called the Super Slug. Another is H&R/NEF's single shot ULTRA SLUG Hunter, Savage's bolt action models 220 and 201 IF you can find them, and YES Ithaca's NEW Deerslayer II and Deersaleyr III. Mossberg also made their LPA pumps fitted with the new adjustable Lighting Pump Action trigger system and are reported to be very accurate. On the custom arena Randy Fritz's Tar hunt shop makes bolt action 12 and 20 gauge models. IF you already own a TC Encore 209/50 muzzle loader, then you can also purchase a 12 gauge slug barrel for your encore turning it into an accurate single shot shotgun.

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