I own 6 different SG's. 12 ga, 20 ga, pumps, semis, you name it. I even SBS'd one of them. But funny thing is, I didn't purchase any of them. They were either hand-me down heirlooms, or won at raffles, auctions, work gifts etc. I am a bird hunter of Ducks, geese, quail, dove and turkey. I like the shotgun, especially for it's versatility. It is devastating in it's HD role, but will never be my #1 choice for immediate HD. While powerful, it is most devastating at bedroom distances. If I'm blasting in these "bedroom distances" then I figure either one of two things happened. 1) Surprise in the night, and the bedroom distance will likely have been closed pretty damn quick at which point waving a SG around would be impossible. Or 2) if I have been trapped into a bedroom of sorts and I will have, by that time, hopefully, already gone to my pistol and/or carbine choices.
Beyond 10 yards I pick the carbine or any sort of rifle for that matter. Hell, even at 5 yards, I choose the latter.
My experience I'm about to explain is one that I am not proud of, it was in my long gone youth, but it happened:
A buddy of mine has a ranch and of course had a pig problem. We trapped 29 of them in a single trap one night and dispatched every one with close range pistol shots to the head. Humane kills. We cleaned and cleaned until we couldn't clean anymore. We had a couple hundred pounds of meat each. We had to dump the rest of the carcasses. When we did we had an experience like I've never had before and probably never will again. We started shooting the carcasses with every type of gun we had. We figured we were helping the buzzards and coyotes by making the meals easier to eat later. Anyway, from a dozen or so steps away, we popped pistol rounds into the already dead pigs; they made holes and whatnot. Then we shot birdshot at them from our SG's and the bodies seemed to just absorb the shot. Barely wiggled. We then shot 00 buck from the same 24" barreled shotguns with modified chokes and the carcasses finally seemed to react a little. We witnessed a little more movement on the ground and more holes appearing. Not much else really, more or less absorbed kinda like the birdshot.
THEN we shot a .270 at one from the same distance and WHAM!. Holy cr@p! That single rifle bullet not only pierced through and through, it briefly lifted the carcass of a dead 150 lb pig a couple inches off the ground from the internal shock wave. The exit holes were horrendous. Along with the rifle shots, pieces of flesh and blood starting getting all over us as well as the vehicles behind us. The rifle round was incredible.
Lastly, we shot our Ar-15's. Not quite as drastic as the .270, being that the bodies didn't pop off the ground like with the larger rifle round, but the 5.56 was more similar to the .270 than it was to the meek 00 buck shot. The 5.56 produced through cavities with gaping exit wounds. Meat and bone particles becoming air born again. The advantage of the AR over the bolt action .270 was being able to pop a full mag through a carcass in just a few seconds and really seeing the thing come apart, right before our eyes. That experience gave me a very solid respect for the .223/5.56 capabilities, as well as any rifle round for that matter.
That was circa 2008. Nothing has changed for me in the last 15 years. Other than I do want a Beretta 1301 LTT. The end.
Last edited by matemike; 03-02-23 at 23:01.
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
- Mark Twain
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