shooting shot out of a rifled barrel

[faithtreker]

Has anyone ever fired shot out of a rifled barrel? I would like to hear a discussion.

[Firewalker]

Tried it and it doesn't work very well. nice pattern at 10 ft. then nothing.

[Buzzard]

Yup, bout the same. Depends on what ya call a "decent pattern". In my longago misbegotton youth i tried using shot in a CVA Kentucky 45cal. IIRC, i used 50gr-3f and 3/4oz of shot with newspaper wadding. Hoping to make a rabbit gun out of it when in season. Seems to me it would've worked to about 15 steps or so. I do remember it won't kill a starling on the pasture fence any further than that.

[Captchee]

i sure have .
 what you get on a pattern board is basically a pattern that looks like  a donut at 10 yards .
The rifling imparts a twist to the shot column so you get this circular pattern with a big hole in the center  
 
 Now that being said . Strait rifling is a different mater and can actuality improve a pattern

[Uncle Russ]

I suspect most of us have tried this over the years with varying degrees of success.

My own best attempts came about when I made a shot cartridge of sorts, or maybe it could best be called a "enclosed wad" in order to keep the shot away from the rifling.

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I used a plain brown paper bag, cut an appropriate square  from it, ie 4" x 5" rolled that square of paper on a wooden dowel of a size that allowed it to load easily down the barrel, glued the rolled edge, removed the dowel, allowed the rolled paper to dry, poured in an amount of shot that was equal to the amount of powder being used, folded the ends of the paper roll over gluing one end and twisting the other with a small extended 'tag'...and it was ready to load.

I still use this so-called  "shot cartridge" at times in both of my smoothbores.
Of course, in a smoothbore it is strictly for convenience and speed of loading, while in a rifle it does seem to help hold the pattern together a bit longer.
To the best of my knowledge there is no sure fire way of shooting shot through a rifled bore and achieving good patterns, without jumping through a few crazy hoops.
Still yet, it can be done with a moderate amount of success, and it can be a lot of fun.

This question has been asked a lot over the years, and it begs for a better answer than the one I have given.
I have read of others doing different things, and I must have tried dozens and dozens and dozens of different ways myself, but this method, for me, has served the purpose best.

I can't prove it, but I strongly suspect that the use of 2F powder is preferred over 3F when using shot because you do need a OS (Over Shot) card when you seat your shot cartridge....and 3F "appears" to give more blown / erratic patterns than 2F.
This is just an observation on my part and may only happen in my guns, but I have suspected this to be true for years on end, but I  can't find anything that agrees with the theory.

Uncle Russ...

[faithtreker]

Cap, I got the same kind of pattern at 25 yards with my 45. shooting at a turkey head target there was a perfect circle about 16 inches around the head. I was wondering if you could hold accordingly, maybe 8 inches high, low, left or right and have a little success?

[Gordon H.Kemp]

As was said by Russ , Capt. and others. Most who fool around with BP guns have to give it a try , myself included. I don"t know of anyone that has come up with an effective way of doing it?

[daddywpb]

Could an interchangeable shotgun barrel be fitted to a rifle so you could have both?

[Captchee]

yep

[Loyalist Dave]

The T/C New Englander was one such commercially available system in a caplock, sidelock gun, where you could drop-in a 12 gauge barrel where the .50 or .54 rifle barrel was.  It also had screw-in choke tubes.

LD

[Fletcher]

The one size stock fits both barrells will shoot - but you may be disaapointed in the outcome.  The typical drop in comb of a shotgun stock brings th barrell up to your cheek for shooting flying targets.  A rifle stock will not do this near as well.  If you have a high drop in the your stock, the rifle then is a bit trickier to shoot - but that is the way I would go since the old ML rifle had a lot of drop and folks learned to shoot them fine.

I have an H&R inline ML shotgun that I guy gave me.  I dare anyone to hit anything with that dadburn thing!  Nuthin fits right on it!@!!  Must have been the happiest day in his life when he got rid of that albatross.

[Captchee]

what fletcher is saying is tru . HOWEVER>
 There allways seems to be a however  doesnt there .
 However
 many modern feild grade shotgun stocks , carry no more or less drop then a rifle stock .

 
 so it really all depends  on  what your doing .
 IE for wing shooting you wouldnt  be to happy with say the buttplate designe on a hawkens rifle .
HOWEVER . if one was point shooting like  say on a Turkey , it would not be any real issue  as long as one knew how the barrel was throwing a pattern.