Many of today's slug guns feature receivers that are drilled and tapped, allowing the use of top-quality rifle-scopes.

"They all jumped on it at once," Henderson says. "I never heard of a state that wouldn't allows slugs for deer hunting after that."

Winchester quickly purchased the rights to make similar slug loads in 1991, as did Federal in 1992. Then slugs quickly began to evolve from hunks of lead to specialized shotgun bullets in short order.

"In 1993 Remington began making the Copper Solid slug," says Henderson. "Rather than swaged lead, it was machined out of copper bar stock for uniformity, and it was the first shotgun bullet that wasn't heavy in the nose. The first ever rear-heavy slug was the Barnes Expander loaded by Federal in 1997."

That Remington shotgun bullet has evolved into something quite different today, a time when bullet manufacturers have also been able to tweak pistol bullets by making them heavier, longer and wider so that they too can be used in slug guns. I would imagine that because of the popularity of slug guns among hunters throughout the Midwest, the South and along the East Coast, new, more advanced slugs will continue to appear.

Former Hunting staffer and "Benelli On Assignment" host, Joe Coogan (right), and the author stalked through Texas coastal salt march to within spitting distance of this red boar.

Slug Gun Accuracy
"Early sabot slugs with a rifle barrel didn't shoot farther than conventional slugs, but they were more accurate," says Henderson. "That's what sold them to state wildlife managers."

Modern sabot slugs have since been improved in both accuracy and downrange performance. The distance at which a man can kill a deer with a slug gun is highly dependent on his shooting skills and ethics, so I won't belabor that subject any more than to say that slug guns--with appropriate bullets--will cleanly take deer at distances beyond 100 yards.

"If you take a slug gun right out of the box and it will shoot four-inch groups at 100 yards, you're doing pretty good," says Henderson. "If you can play with the load combination, you may be able to do better than that. I have seen production guns shoot two inches and custom guns shoot under an inch."

New Loads like Hornady's 250-grain SST slug (with 1,200 ft.-lbs. of energy at 100 yards) have made 20-gauge guns a viable option for big game hunters.

Though there is a trick to shooting such tight groups, says Henderson. Muzzle flip in lightweight shotgun barrels is a very real issue with slug guns. A shotgun slug, because it takes so long to get down the barrel as compared to a bullet from a centerfire cartridge, is far more likely to get poor direction upon leaving the muzzle of an upward-trending barrel. A .300 Winchester Magnum will give you less muzzle-flip trouble than a 12-gauge slug gun. This is something I've been struggling with as of late, and I wish I'd talked to Henderson sooner. You can't simply shoot these guns like you would a rifle.

"Shotgun barrels are so light that you have to be able to tame that upward movement," Henderson advises. "You must really grip the fore-end, and draw it down toward the shooting bench and back toward you, and get it tight into your shoulder. If you don't do this at the range when you're sighting-in, you'll shoot high when you're in the deer woods and you have to take an off-hand shot."

On that note, back to the range I'll go.