(Photo courtesy of Brad Fitzpatrick)
October 23, 2024
By Brad Fitzpatrick
In 2019 Winchester introduced the 350 Legend cartridge, but even many gun writers were more than a little confused. In an era when ballistically-efficient new cartridges with high BC bullets were all the rage, the Legend seemed like a cartridge that had arrived on the scene a hundred years too late. Ballistically speaking, the 350 Legend wasn’t a whizbang cartridge. With 180-grain .357-inch bullets it would barely break 2,000 feet per second, and the bullets offered were not the sleek, high-performance long-range bullets hunters had learned to love. Many members of the shooting world wondered what the engineers at Winchester were thinking when they released the cartridge.
Hunters who lived in straight-wall states, though, understood the driving force behind the 350 Legend, though. States like Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, which had historically only allowed the use of shotgun slugs and muzzleloader rifles for use during the modern firearms season, had recently passed legislation that allowed the use of straight-wall rifle cartridges for deer hunting. There were some stipulations determining which straight-wall cartridges could be used for deer hunting in these states, most of which required not only a straight-wall case but also a round that fired a .35-inch bullet. Some states had case length regulations as well. There had already been increased interest in my home state of Ohio in cartridges like the .450 Bushmaster and .45-70, and I remember a time not long after straight-wall laws were enacted when owners could ask three times what they had paid for their .444 Marlin lever guns and sell those rifles in a matter of days.
For long-range shooters, the rise of straight-wall cartridges like the 350 Legend (and later the .360 Buckhammer and 400 Legend) was a head-scratcher, but sales of these straight-walls were high. In fact, some ammunition companies suddenly found sales of the upstart 350 Legend cartridge were outpacing classics like the 7mm Remington Magnum. The reason was simple: modern straight-walls weren’t devised to compete against the 6.5 Creedmoor, 6.5 PRC, and Winchester’s own 6.8 Western. They were competing against shotgun slugs.
Slugging It Out (Photo courtesy of Brad Fitzpatrick) I still remember being early in my teen years and wanting to hunt deer with my older friends, but doing so meant shooting a slug gun. Most of us Gen Xers who hunted in straight-wall states cut our teeth—and sometimes our eyebrows—shooting slug-loaded 12 and 20-guage shotguns borrowed from our fathers or older siblings. Many of these guns had smooth barrels and fired Foster-type lead slugs, which didn’t exactly result in gilt-edge accuracy. If you could hit an aluminum pie plate at 50 yards, I recall, you were considered proficient. That’s not as simple as it sounds when you’re a bony 13-year-old shivering behind a gun you know is going to beat the daylights out of you with each pull of the trigger.
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The 350 Legend ushered in an era of modest-recoiling deer rifles that were legal for hunting in straight-wall states. The average seven-pound 350 Legend rifle produces recoil levels on par with a .243 Winchester, and while the newer .360 Buckhammer and 400 Legend rounds produce more setback than the 350 they’re nowhere near the 40-plus foot-pounds of recoil generated by a six-pound 12-gauge gun loaded with magnum slugs, a recoil force that matches the average .375 H&H Magnum. I laughed a little at how many experienced deer hunters bought a 350 Legend for their kids to shoot, only to buy one later for themselves. Seems we all prefer a little less recoil in our lives.
It would seem this new crop of mild-mannered straight-wall cartridges would spell doom for slug guns, but is that true? Are slug guns obsolete? Maybe not.
The Good and Bad of Slug Guns (Photo submitted by the author) As stated, 12 and 20-gauge shotgun slugs—especially full-house 3-inch loads--produce heavier recoil than the 350 Legend and its ilk. Not surprisingly, that makes slug guns harder for most shooters to fire accurately, and it makes practicing with your deer gun less appealing. The late John Wootters, one of my favorite Petersen’s hunting contributors of all time, once said, “It’s nickels to knotholes that your fifth group fired from your .338 Winchester Magnum won’t be as accurate as your first group,” and that’s very much true. Most shooters handle the recoil of the Legend cartridges and the .360 Buckhammer far better than they handle their 12-guage slug guns, and you’re more likely to put in the range time required for maximum accuracy when your firearm is fun to shoot. I’ve also seen fewer deer shot poorly with the 350 Legend than I did during my youth when most everyone used a slug gun.
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To be fair, though, I don’t think that the disparity between slug gun and straight-wall accuracy is as great as many would have you believe. At 100 yards the various 350 Legends and .360 Buckhammers I’ve shot would group around 1.5-inches for three shots, which is perfectly sufficient but not match-level accuracy. While many pump-action and autoloading slug guns with rifled barrels won’t shoot 1.5 MOA some will, and there are some bolt-action slug guns that will shoot even smaller groups if the shooter manages recoil effectively. TarHunt’s bolt-action slug guns have been the standard for years (although they’re quite expensive), and the ones I’ve shot would do 1.5-inches or better at 100 yards with a load they like. The far more economical Savage 212 (12-gauge) and 220 (20-gauge) bolt-action slug shotguns are very close to that, and they cost less than a grand. The Savage guns feature very good barrels and AccuTriggers and are capable of producing excellent accuracy. Chad McKibben, a good friend and hunting buddy, carries his scoped Savage 220 in spite of the onslaught of new, low-recoil straight-wall cartridges, and he has killed some outstanding Ohio bucks with that gun. Chad handles recoil well so the 20-gauge isn’t overwhelming, and he can shoot that gun effectively to 200 yards, which is pushing the outer limits for most straight-wall cartridges.
The trajectory curve of straight-wall cartridges is, not surprisingly, better than most shotgun slugs. Modern 12-gauge, 2 ¾-inch sabot slugs generally fire a 300-grain bullet at around 1,900 feet per second. For a 150-yard zero such a load will need to strike around three-inches high at 100 yards. A 350 Legend or 360 Buckhammer zeroed at 200 yards shoot between four and four-and-a-half inches high at 100 yards depending upon the load. Clearly, neither is designed for true long-range shooting, but the 350 and .360 have a flatter trajectory curve than a 12-gauge slug and that simplifies shooting. Slugs are also more impacted by wind drift. In a 10 mile-per-hour full-value crosswind a 300-grain 12-guage slug drifts between three and three-and-a-half inches, considerably more than the 2.4-inches a 180-grain Federal .360 Buckhammer Power-Shok bullet drifts at that range and wind speed.
12-gauge 300-grain slugs do have more energy at the muzzle than either the 350 Legend or .360 Buckhammer. The average 12-gauge slug produces between 2,400 and 2,500 foot-pounds of punch at the muzzle compared to 2,200 foot-pounds for the .360 and around 1,900 for the average 350 Legend. Out to 200 yards slugs produce notably more energy than straight-wall cartridges.
The Virtue of Versatility (Photo submitted by the author) Slug guns kick harder than popular straight-walls, and the trajectory of straight-walls is flatter than that of slug guns. It would seem, then, that there was no reason to own a slug gun, but there might be one: versatility.
The first gun I ever purchased myself was a Winchester 1300 Black Shadow slide-action shotgun combo which came with a smooth-bore 22-inch deer barrel and a 28-inch ventilated rib barrel. Original asking price was in the neighborhood of $200 at the time, which was a princely sum for a kid who made his money baling hay in the summers.
But I knew that a shotgun with two barrels would allow me to hunt deer, turkey, grouse, pheasants, cottontails, and waterfowl, and I could shoot trap on weekends at the local club with that gun. My $200 shotgun checked a lot of boxes.
Winchester no longer lists a slug barrel/field barrel combo gun on their website, but Mossberg offers a Model 500 field/deer combo gun with two barrels for $629, which is probably keeping up with inflation against my $200 Winchester pump. That $629 goes a long way, and it’s especially appealing to someone who just wants one gun for hunting deer, ducks, upland game, and everything else. Some people simply don’t want to buy a new gun for every season, and for them there’s still nothing more versatile than a deer/field combo shotgun. Prices for shotgun slugs start around a dollar per round, which is more than 350 Legend ammunition which can be had oftentimes for seventy-five cents per round or even less. However, a shotgun with a field barrel will also shoot field loads, which are the cheapest of all at around fifty cents.
A Winner? (Photo submitted by the author) I think in most regards a straight-wall deer rifle makes the most sense because it offers suitable accuracy and a flatter trajectory than a slug gun with far less recoil. However, if you own a slug gun and shoot it well then there’s no need to swap your gun for straight-wall. If you’re looking for a single firearm that does everything then a shotgun with a field and slug barrel is still a good bet, but both guns are still effective on deer in the hands of a skilled shooter.