Stainless and sabots - a success story - stainless steel rifles and saboted slug loads - Special Intelligence - Column

Shooting Industry, June, 1992 by Jon R. Sundra

On the ammo scene there's Olin-Winchester having acquired BRI a couple of years ago, now making the saboted ammo themselves, as does Federal. Activ is producing an excellent Brenneke-type slug, and the Rottweil people will soon be introducing a new version of the famous Brenneke slug itself.

All this interest in rifled bores and saboted slug loads has further prompted the ammo makers to take another look at the taken-for-granted mediocrity of the Foster-type slug.

The Foster is the cup-shaped chunk of lead that the Big Three ammo companies have been loading for oh-so-long as "rifled slugs" and which had a reputation for abysmal accuracy when fired through conventional smoothbore barrels. Even here improvements in both accuracy and velocity have been realized by fitting smoothbore barrels with rifled choke tubes, thereby maintaining the potential of using one gun for both winged game and deer.

While the combination of rifled accessory tube and Foster slug can't match the accuracy and flat trajectory the saboted rounds offer, they're a damnsite better than what slug shooters of a generation ago had to accept. If today's worst being better than yesterday's best isn't dramatic progress, I don't know what is.