I collect old semi auto duck guns and like to take them duck hunting and in the past have used many thousands of rounds of steel shot. I typically open the chokes up to light modified or modify them with screw in tru -chokes and will never fire steel through a choke tighter than modified I also limit most to #2 shot but have shot bb’s from a couple newer 80’s 3” guns. I haven’t had any damage to any of these guns including Belgian A-5’s, Japanese A-5’s, S&W water Fowlers ect…. First off I think the real culprit for damaged barrels was bad early steel shot with improper wads. On top of that water fowl guns were almost all full choked and many were tight full chokes. Now I wouldn’t run hyper velocity steel through them, I have a load that shoots 475gr of steel with the very excellent lbc43 wad at 1400-1450fps that I suspect is fairly moderate pressure wise and is what I have used in my guns. Were barrels built in the 1920’s through the 1980’s sub-standard somehow? Weren’t they proofed with the same pressures we proof 2.75” shells at today? The quality of some of these barrels certainly seems better than modern made ones. Steel shot should never touch your bore anyways with proper steel shot wads. I also only use annealed shot. Of course store bought shells who knows about the shot hardness. Were bore sizes tighter back when they used fiber wads, could this be an issue with pre-war models? I’m just trying to wrap my head around why steel has been painted in such a poor light. In England they fire steel shot (standard steel loads) in many fine old doubles with very thin barrels, I would not do that personally, but they do. I’m not recommending anyone else shoot steel through guns not made for it and you should follow what your gun manufacturer recommends but this is my experience with my guns. What say you? Was I just lucky? Have any of y’all damaged guns with modern steel shot under bb size with chokes more open than modified? I will tell y’all when they first mandated steel shot, I bulged my Remington 870’s barrel right behind the choke so I’m not a steel shot damage denier, it happened a lot in the early days I just wonder how much of it was the guns and if that damage would happen now with modern steel loading techniques.
Texcl2
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14,840 Posts
I think you understand the situation well. Since tungsten, I no longer shoot steel, but I have never seen any damage except in the choke area. All my waterfowl guns are/were equipped with steel rated choke tubes. On SxSs I got extended tubes with the constriction beyond the muzzle. Never an issue. I tend to shoot IM for waterfowl with size 3 or bigger shot and Full with smaller. I like to watch them fall.
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