Slugs VS Pellets, whats your view?

Helped a friend, this past Friday, thin out the varmints on his property. NONE of the shots I took that day were under 110 yards. Mostly in the 130 to 150 yard range. He was shooting his Impact with slugs & I used my Boss. We BOTH hit pretty much everything we were trying to at those ranges but I'll bet my cost of ammo was a lot less than his at the end of the day. While I'd love to make a 200+ yard shot before I croak, the cost of going down that rabbit hole doesn't appeal to me any longer. I'm pretty dang happy having a pellet barrel that can CONSISTENTLY do that.

pellets <50yrds, slugs >50yrds
pesting or hunting with .22 & .30

just pellets in my .357 due to better accuracy, and slugs only in my .50's

I am primarily a pellet shooter for a number of reasons. The most important reason is that I shoot mostly on my own property, at ranges out to a maximum of approximately 70 yards. Pellets are superbly accurate at that range, but even more critical is that the likelihood of an errant pellet going off my property is much smaller than that of an errant slug. I don’t want to have the risk of a pellet going into someone’s yard, hitting a window or a house, or even worse, a person.

I’ve tried slugs at the rifle range out to 110 yards. Frankly there was no difference between the two in group sizes from my Impacts or Crowns. Given that I am not killing anything (most of the time) I see no need for the greater velocity retention of slugs at great (70 yard +) distances. If I really need to shoot something at distance, or something big, I have many, many other “tools” for that purpose.

Chris

It all depends upon needs and safety. I do mostly dairy pesting on collared doves and pigeons and pellets are plenty good to get the job done. I get pretty consistent results with pellets out to 75-80 yards, and most shots are well under that. Secondly, slugs wouldn't be safe in the environment.

Great question to ask of yourself. If you don’t really shoot pass 100 yards and if there are any sort of safety concerns then DON’T shoot slugs!!! I only shoot slugs at local range including tuning, risk of damage and injure is simply too high but I live in a track home in suburbia.


Then the question is are you the type of person that find a good ammo/gun combo and likes to leave it alone? If so then stick with pellets. Chasing slugs at least for now is a constant rabbit holes of trying new slugs and reconfigure the guns to shoot those new slugs farther. I use to be happy shooting 100 yards, then 200 yards and now I’m chasing 300 yards. Now I find 100 yards a bit boring and more less just validation for my tunes, my sighter at 100 yards is a 2 inch gong and I can hit 1 inch gong with relative ease as long as wind does not switch to much. BUT that is fun to me, the constant pursuit of next thing! If that’s not your idea of fun then don’t shoot slugs, it can drive you mad!


On the other spectrum i only shoot sub12 pellets in the back yard because that’s the only safe and sensible thing to do. But that’s a different kind of challenge trying to put sub 12 pellet on top of another at 35 yards in the wind. In field target we call 1.5 inch kill zones at 35 yards pools.

Again I can’t shoot high power at home but maybe you can, many have the luxury of much better ranges at home. My friend who has a300 yard range in the back yard still shoots hunter field target 177 guns far more than anything else.

i think pellets are just as good as slugs unless your shooting better than 150 yards pellet accurcy up to 150 i bet is way better from all ive ever seen

CTairgunner1288 said:

What is your reasoning behind the <50 and >50 yards?

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thats where i start seeing wind affecting pellets beyond ethical hunting shots.
thats just my opinion.

CTairgunner1288 said:

Fair enough I was just curious

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all good man !!

douger said:

i think pellets are just as good as slugs unless your shooting better than 150 yards pellet accurcy up to 150 i bet is way better from all ive ever seen

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Sadly pellet is only possibly more accurate than slugs pass 50 yards in zero wind condition which almost doesn’t exist anywhere near where I live. Even at 100 yards a MOA group with pellets is VERY challenging. With the right setup and tune slugs can and will out shoot pellets by a country mile. Even at 50 yard wind will push any pellets around enough to not reliably zero there, I zero slugs at 50 with easy even in some wind and easy ragged hole. Just this Saturday I install my slug kit for crown, as validation I shot 10 slugs at 100 yard paper with wind(no change in POA) and got 2 clusters of 5 holes touching less than an inch apart. This is with medium weight slugs, not the heavier higher BC slugs.

But I’m warning you, slugs may sound good but they are deep rabbit holes!

I use slugs completely different than you guys do. I use a condor and slugs are not extremely accurate at long ranges. However they are plenty accurate at 70 yards and in. I use 44 grain 25 cal flat nose slugs at 1100 fps to down raccoon, coyote and possums at 50 yards plus. I will be honest here and say up front that I don't kill any yotes anymore. I don't have any livestock to protect at the moment and it's just not fun for me to hunt predators. I can tell you this tho. It knocks the hell out of racoons at distance. I think it would be cool to have a super accurate slug thrower that can go out to 300 yards. I'm generally a pellet guy unless I need more power on target but any innovation in airguns can only help the sport in my estimation.

i got into pellet guns to have a quiet way to deal with problems around the house .. not to have a fancy look-at-me and mines da most powafull pewett gun on da pwanet type garbage .. nothing against a nice gun shooting unecessary and expensive ammo, really .. im more on the practical side of it i guess .. bottom line is i dont need slugs for anything, the gains are comical at best, except for very specific applications like hunting from a blind at close range ..and wasting money on 'swugs' just to do it i dont get .. yeah, the little tweety bird you popped with a 'swug' at 50 simply isnt selling me on the idea lol ..

In my experience, slugs for groundhogs. Pellets for paper, squirrels, birds, etc.
Groundhog shots for me are farther than 50 yards typically. Slugs kill groundhogs on the spot more efficiently that pellets. Thats just my experience. Your mileage may vary.

CTairgunner1288 said:

I shot this group yesterday at 50 yards with jsb mr 25.39 at 930 fps in 10 to 20 mph winds.

Seemed pretty unaffected by the winds

11 shots.

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The good thing about pellets of today is the improvement of pellet design. The best BC pellets today that I know is the .22 monster redesign with published BC of 0.053 which is unheard of and extremely impressive, it is starting to creep into slug territory. It is because they look more like a slug than a traditional diablo pellets and therefore need to be a bit more careful as they don't lose energy just like slugs.

Using 900 FPS speed, 10 and 20 mph 90 degree left hand crosswind as a baseline, the new and awesome monster RD as will have wind drift of 7.9 and 15.7 inch respectively. Compare that to the new 38 grain slugs with BC of 0.13 with wind drift of 3.5 and 7 inches. Even with the new slugs if the wind could change between 0 and 10 MPH wind the group without wind adjustment will be 3.5 inches and for the MRD would be 7.9 inches which would make shooting a MOA group rather challenging. Then if you add head or tail wind things get wild even faster! Slugs make shooting MOA groups half as challenging but certainly far from guaranteed with some wind.

For giggles at 200 yards the MRD @900FPS with 10mph wind will have wind drift of 34.6 inches.........Kentucky holdover anyone? AND at 20 mph crosswind it will drift 67.7 inches or 5.6 feet which might be out of field of view in most scopes at max zoom. Now try to do that with traditional pellets with half the BC........LOL!!!

Again, at 50 yards pellets are plenty! at 100 yards and beyond things will change with the wind. That being said when I hunt for rabbits on the plain I only use slugs partly because some shots can be quite long(100-150 yards) and no one is around.


EDIT: Not to doubt you but at 930fps the MRD will have a wind drift of 2 inches at 50 yards with 10mph left hand crosswind(from muzzle to target) so they will be affected by wind, you most likely caught consistent wind if you kept the same POA or being wizard level wind reader.

I want a set of flags that you used!