Taipan Veteran Long LW barrel - trying to find appropriate slugs

I did some forum search regarding the change in velocity. Apparently this is normal as the barrel gets leaded in. I've seen a few posts from different people asking about a drop of 10 to 20 FPS when they cleaned their barrels. I was aware that too much barrel fouling affects accuracy, but I didn't know that it also affected velocity... certainly not such a sudden change in just one session. My gun gained 1.5 FPE practically overnight.

rangur1 said:

My vet long shot AVS.253 35g slugs dish base at 960 fps best. 70 FPE and 1 MOA at 100 yards. Mine had a CZ barrel but that’s where I’d start with yours.

Click to expand...

Thank you for the suggestion. I will try some of the AVS slugs when I get a chance to buy some.

Vetmx said:

Two things. First, what are you lubing your slugs with? Yes a clean gun is slower but a dirty gun shoots bad. So it’s very difficult to find the number of shots zone between cleanings and how many fowling shots it takes to be back to normal when your gun isn’t dialed in yet. It’s just part of the slug life. Second, if all your slugs aren’t cutting a single hole at 30 ish yards, prepare for disappointment at 50-75 yards. Looking at your targets, I see nothing that would make me shoot farther than the distance you printed the groups. Trust me, it shouldn’t be that difficult to print good groups with the correct components at 30 yards. Your inconsistencies and fliers at that close of a distance are not you. Unless you do it with pellets, it’s the gun/tune/slug.

Yes you are better off in the wind with a slug. You get a better pop unless you use a Polymag pellet. But those fliers and inconsistencies with slugs will equate to gut shots, butt shots and frustrating misses. You may be onto something with that one slug. But to bring it home you will need to disassemble, turn up reg, retune then test. Disassemble, turn up reg, retune then test.

Click to expand...

Thank you for letting me know.
I'll keep at it.

Dairyboy said:

Decided to try my luck. Had 21gr .217 and .218. From slugging my barrel previously wasn't even gonna mess with .218. Spritzed some gunzilla on the slugs and went at it. Not sure the speed. Likely around 800-830fps. Just a guess. But this is 5 shots at 80yds just using a front bag shooting out of my truck. Slight breeze left to right. First shot was the left one then 4 in the small group to the right. We got some potential here! View attachment 486432

Click to expand...

This is good to see. Earlier, I was trying to see how much distance I could get from our backyard, but I can only squeeze out about 40 meters. Maybe if I go to my parents' house, I can get a bit over 50 meters.

Thinking back what Dairyboy said about the 0.218" slugs, I measured the FX Hybrids because it is the tightest going in the barrel of all of the slugs I have. The FX Hybrids measure 0.2174". This is not too different from the H&N 23gr 0.217" which measured 0.2171". I think what really makes the difference in the friction is that the FX Hybrids is a much taller projectile so it has more surface area against the barrel. The flat area on the side looks to be about half on the H&N compared to the FX Hybrid.

In comparison, the H&N 21gr 0.217" measured 0.21655".

For all the projectile I'm measuring, I'm seeing about a 0.0001" plus or minus a certain median. What's sad though is rarely that median is what the specifications of the projectiles are supposed to be. Everyone talks about getting the correct size slugs for your barrel, but this makes it difficult because even if you know the exact size of your barrel, and you find a vendor that sells a slug with the exact same size specifications, you most likely still need to buy the projectiles only to then find out that it's not the correct size because the specs on the tin lies half the time. This also makes it a bit difficult to stock up on a certain slugs because even if you find one that shoots really well in your gun, if you then have to re-stock a few years into the future, it would probably be prudent to re-test a smaller sample before stocking up again because the tolerances for these things are not as tight as we would like or what some manufacturers would have us believe. I'm quite certain that there will be some variations between different batches... heck, I'm seeing them within the same tin.

I get it, ultra precise productions are very costly (and we are talking about only a few tenths of a percentage point here). I'm certainly not expecting perfection considering the relatively low prices of these things, but they should just say it as it is because it obviously matters for this application. I mean stating the tolerances on the tin is still not a guaranteed success, but knowing the production tolerances will at least help me make a decision on whether or not I will take the risk on trying out certain slugs. Some of the manufacturers are so off in their specifications that they might as well just label them as small, medium, and large.

I shot some JSB Hades at the same distance (31.5 meters) tonight. I'm posting the photo just so I'm not cherry picking groups. The Hades 5-shot group is at the bottom target; 0.28" CTC. Disregard the hole at the very bottom as that is from an H&N Hunter Extreme that would not grouping at all. The target at the top was the H&N slug 21gr 0.217 that I shot the other night.

Many people in the forums claim "one hole groups all day long" at what ever distance... I believe that my skill as a shooter is the biggest hurdle for me in trying to asses a gun's accuracy as I don't find it easy at all shooting super tight groups. Short of just clamping down a gun to a vice, I am not going to eliminate my user error.

Good groups! Maybe I should try them out as well.