I've traveled in many 3rd world countries and have always been curious about how the Locals go about speedily pushing pieces of lead thru metal tubes in order to convert animals into supper. So here's a test I put together in the spirit of such endeavors involving some slugs that some might consider crude. Others might not consider them at all!
Point being, if a guy has nothing but a smoothbore {preferably for the course, keeping to the genre, a gaspipe slamfire} and some reloading components...or more likely, actually, as loaded shotshells are about as ubiquitous on earth as dirt, a half box of corroded Swartklip or Armscor or Industrial Cartridge (PTY) Ltd birdshot laying around, and has access to a wheelweight or 10, he's got the making of a Real Deal pig or in a pinch, banteng slayer.
Probably this has been shown here before, but the gist of it is a hole drilled into a piece of wood, said hole filled with lead, alloy not too important.
To be totally straightup, I've never seen this setup in my travels, but was given the idea by a Canadian aficionado of the weird and wonderful as I and likely a few of the membership here am/are.
No sprueplate, just slapdash eyeballing with a 5/8 drill bit as to when to say "When". I'll be honest, I was impressed with how similar the little rascals panned out to be. First attempt was to the left. Too heavy in fact for a Replacement of a light birdshot load so they went back in the pot. With a shallower hole, the little fellows to the right worked out to be a little under 1 ounce, not too bad for eyeballing. I separated the heaviest for a 3-shot group from standing up on my hind legs at 20 paces. Results as follows.
Group is 4 1/2 inches so not great but the barrel was wayward in its younger years and now has no legitimate sights, sporting only a brass screw I threaded into it when I cut it from 30" down to 26. Thus, straight bored with no choke to get in the way. Didn't want to risk a choke on one of these wheelweights going thru at an angle.
Anyway, the shots were not wild as they indicated an actual grouping which I found interesting. And...somehow they appear to have gone thru the paper front end On. I'll take luck over skill any day.
for proper zeroing, I have a setup on one of my anvil stumps I use to zero shotguns, bending the barrels to address POI issues. But the barrel shot pretty much "on" so I didn't monkey with it. If I was going to use these boolits to stock the pantry I'd zero the thing.
I backed up the target with a 5 gallon bucket of water but that didn't stop the slug. Didn't really think it would, but the bucket had a leak in it so I figured it would end its days doing something productive. Sort of.
Now immediately what comes to mind is ways to improve the setup, right? Like maybe deepening the hole and then cutting the slugs with a hacksaw to even them up. Or whatever.
Bottom line, this ad hoc affair resulted in an admittedly ugly slug, but in fact, a boolit that in a pinch could reduce the biggest, meatiest critters to a Sunday barbeque pretty efficiently.
If any of you fellows have any comments, I'd sure be interested in hearing them.
Pix.
The Roster; Overweights cut from the team to the left. Fit and ready for the field to the right:
I didn't swap out a factory load, but rather a Secret Handload tuned to produce peak performance of this highgrade ammoonishun:
The stellar group:
The Gun, during a past range session, demonstrating its fully adjustable sight system:
Custom front sight:
Now, in all seriousness, I cannot recommend the setup, and am only presenting it here to show what I did, not to show what you should do. In fact, don't try it.