[bountyhunter]

I overhead my neighbors talking about this past week's hunting, and was concerned to hear that they were hunting with shotgnus and running dogs (the hunters positioned at the base of their favorite trees, normal for Virginia), but some were using slugs and some were using buckshot. Now they were positioned about 100-110 yards apart which is fine for buckshot, but I am not so sure about slugs though. I do not know the effective range for a 12 ga. slug. If everyone were in treestands, I probably would not have a problem with this, but with everyone on the ground, is this practice dangerous to the other hunters that are not using slugs?

 

[thumper723]

I know guys who SIGHT IN at 100yds for slugs!

Down here, for hunting with dogs, everyone I know uses BUCK ONLY, and some guys do not go larger than #1 Buck!

 

[Researcher]

Good question. When the deer start runnin' it seems people get tunnel vision. This season the best deer hunter I know lost track of two of us a couple of hundred yards beyond a pair of running deer. His first shot (with a 30-06) dropped a deer, his second shot whizzed by maybe 50 or 60 yards to our left, and his third shot hit another deer. The thing is, as those deer ran between us and the shooter, he was turning more and more toward us without realizing it. He maybe shouldn't have taken that third shot, but it hit the deer and that was the end of it (or the end of it flying out to where we were anyway, the exit hole took out a big piece of a rib). He was a bit stunned when he realized how far he had turned toward us while shooting. The rounds he was running only drop off about a foot at 300 yards, and we were probably closer than that!

-Dave