Straight Case

One gun only

If you could only have one gun, or you wanted one that would fit in your Bug Out Bag, but still be useful at a distance, which one would you get?

Mind you, if you only can have One Gun, it needs to be a serious caliber, at least .357 magnum if a rifle, or at least 20 gauge if a shotgun. If it's a rifle, you won't be able to get many birds with it. If it's a shotgun, you can get medium game out to maybe 100 yards, but not much beyond. Finally, it has to have some intimidation factor, so a shotgun might be best.

Sounds like no compromise is possible, right?

Wrong.

Consider:

A shotgun that converts to a rifle. No, I'm not talking about something exotic like a Drilling, or one of the Rossi barrel-swap single shots. No, you need to have at least two shots, because sometimes you miss with the first, or there are two targets to be struck.

Here's the shotgun:

That's the Stoeger Double Defense, available in 12 or 20 gauge. Note the Picatinny rails for mounting sights and/or lasers/lights. It's also an Over/Under design, which makes for a slimmer gun by about an inch than a Coach Gun. Of course, with 12-ga, you have excellent ammo commonality for all purposes from anti-materiel to armor-piercing to big game OR upland hunting. From one company, too, if you shop here.

You have only just touched one half of the possibility, however. You can load many lesser calibers with this product. That insert is 10" long, and if you select it in the 44 Magnum caliber (shown), and if you happen to have some of this ammunition, you are set to deliver a ton of muzzle energy to your target way past where that Ddupleks slug will get to. If you have a decent scope mounted to that upper rail on the Stoeger, you might notice that you still have a half-ton of energy and over 1,000 ft/sec velocity left at 250 yards with between 3 and 4 feet of drop.

If you have a more slightly-built member of the family who needs arming, get this shotgun in 20 gauge, and get the inserts in .357 Magnum. Ddupleks sells their amazing ammo in 20 gauge also, and Buffalo Bore has this amazing .357 ammo. Using the 1700 fps chart, we can see that you will have well over a half-ton of muzzle energy and almost a quarter-ton at 250 yards, with about the same drop as 44 Magnum.

Cost? List for the Double Defense is $500, the inserts are $150 each, and you will probably spend $200-$400 on an optic. I would choose a 1-4X tactical if it were me.

For about a thousand bucks, you have your One Gun, and I can hear it now, "but, but 'Dog, for that kind of money, I can have two decent guns that will do all that stuff."

What you said, lad, "two decent guns"....unlike in the movies, you can't shoot two guns at once. If you stayed with this One Gun Only concept, and carried about 5# worth of ammo, you'd be set for any encounter, two rounds at a time. If you go down, and one of your buddies winds up with your gun, your bud can operate it with 5 seconds worth of OJT.

One Gun Only, think about it.

1 MOA with a 12 Gauge @ 100 yards?

Color me schooled.

Just messing around on gun pages, I ran across one article about rifled-barrel shotguns, and it led to reading another, and so on.

Rifled barreled shotguns have been around  for at least 80 years, but a recent development, the Sabot Slug, has rekindled interest in them.

Many states with good populations of white-tailed deer do not allow the use of rifles. We even have one shotgun-only County here in Oregon, that being MY County, Multnomah, within the Willamette Unit.

I've hunted blacktail deer (a small species, big one might dress at 120#) in Willamette Unit, but never got one in the populous County. My last blacktail was a 60# doe that I was able to sling on top of my backpack and hump out of the woods in the Coast Range.

I've hunted white-tail in MA, but the only one I ever saw taken was a 140# spike with a 20-ga slug. My hunting partner shot it in the tailbone, and the shock to the spinal cord killed it where it stood. That was a smoothbore barrel, though, same gun he hunted pheasant with. I never knew anyone who ever took a deer at over 70 yards with a slug, until reading about it today.

I almost can't conceive of shots at 200 yards with any shotgun, no matter how well-built or tested,but it's been done, and there is NRA-sanctioned competition at 100 yards.

This competition has resulted in the present national best of .787" five-shot group at 100 yards. Bench resting, no sled, the winner used a one-power Aimpoint red-dot sight. It's claimed that if Average Joe Hunter invests in a decent slug gun with good barrel, and uses premium slugs ($$$), under 3 MOA is easy, and minute-of-deer at 150 yards is doe-able. The problem is that most sabot slugs begin to fall below the speed of sound at 125 yards or so, and the trajectory begins to resemble artillery after that.

The thing that gets me is the available energy in a sabot-slug. The 385-grain Winchester 3" slug is listed conservatively at 1850 fps for it's 385-gr mass, which gives 2,926 #/ft energy, and since some get 2000 fps out of it, that's a whopping 3,416 #/ft energy. This brings the short-range energy of this ammo up near the Dangerous Game standards, and certainly adequate for hunting anything on this continent.

I might have to look into one of these for my Mossberg, since I've already convinced myself I need to put a reflex sight on it. The best I've done with slugs is 5"@ 50 yds, good enough for the slug portion of the Sheriff's qualification to meet Master level. Now that I know that less then that group size is available at 100 yds, I'm VERY interested in trying it out.